Michael Faraday

But the impressions given in conversation may not be always correct. Happily there exist his written opinions on this subject. In a letter addressed to Professor Andrews of Belfast, and dated 2nd February, 1843, there occurs this passage: – "As to the particular point of your letter about which you honour me by asking my advice, I have no advice to give; but I have a strong feeling in the matter, and will tell you what I should do. I have always felt that there is something degrading in offering rewards for intellectual exertion, and that societies or academies, or even Kings and Emperors, should mingle in the matter does not remove the degradation, for the feeling which is hurt is a point above their condition, and belongs to the respect which a man owes to himself. With this feeling, I have never since I was a boy aimed at any such prize; or even if, as in your case, they came near me, have allowed them to move me from my course; and I have always contended that such rewards will never move the men who are most worthy of reward. Still, I think rewards and honours good if properly distributed, but they should be given for what a man has done, and not offered for what he is to do, or else talent must be considered as a thing marketable and to be bought and sold, and then down falls that high tone of mind which is the best excitement to a man of power, and will make him do more than any commonplace reward. When a man is rewarded for his deserts, he honours those who grant the reward, and they give it not as a moving impulse to him, but to all those who by the reward are led to look to that man for an example."

Eleven years afterwards Faraday expressed similar views, but more fully, in a letter to the late Lord Wrottesley as chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of the British Association: —

    "Royal Institution, March 10th, 1854.

"My Lord,

"I feel unfit to give a deliberate opinion on the course it might be advisable for the Government to pursue if it were anxious to improve the position of science and its cultivators in our country. My course of life, and the circumstances which make it a happy one for me, are not those of persons who conform to the usages and habits of society. Through the kindness of all, from my Sovereign downwards, I have that which supplies all my need; and in respect of honours, I have, as a scientific man, received from foreign countries and Sovereigns, those which, belonging to very limited and select classes, surpass in my opinion anything that it is in the power of my own to bestow.

"I cannot say that I have not valued such distinctions; on the contrary, I esteem them very highly, but I do not think I have ever worked for or sought after them. Even were such to be now created here, the time is past when these would possess any attraction for me; and you will see therefore how unfit I am, upon the strength of any personal motive or feeling, to judge of what might be influential upon the minds of others. Nevertheless, I will make one or two remarks which have often occurred to my mind.

"Without thinking of the effect it might have upon distinguished men of science, or upon the minds of those who, stimulated to exertion, might become distinguished, I do think that a Government should for its own sake honour the men who do honour and service to the country. I refer now to honours only, not to beneficial rewards; of such honours I think there are none. Knighthoods and baronetcies are sometimes conferred with such intentions, but I think them utterly unfit for that purpose. Instead of conferring distinction, they confound the man who is one of twenty, or perhaps fifty, with hundreds of others. They depress rather than exalt him, for they tend to lower the especial distinction of mind to the commonplaces of society. An intelligent country ought to recognize the scientific men among its people as a class. If honours are conferred upon eminence in any class, as that of the law or the army, they should be in this also. The aristocracy of the class should have other distinctions than those of lowly and high-born, rich and poor, yet they should be such as to be worthy of those whom the Sovereign and the country should delight to honour, and, being rendered very desirable and even enviable in the eyes of the aristocracy by birth, should be unattainable except to that of science. Thus much I think the Government and the country ought to do, for their own sake and the good of science, more than for the sake of the men who might be thought worthy of such distinction. The latter have attained to their fit place, whether the community at large recognize it or not.

"But besides that, and as a matter of reward and encouragement to those who have not yet risen to great distinction, I think the Government should, in the very many cases which come before it having a relation to scientific knowledge, employ men who pursue science, provided they are also men of business. This is perhaps now done to some extent, but to nothing like the degree which is practicable with advantage to all parties. The right means cannot have occurred to a Government which has not yet learned to approach and distinguish the class as a whole. * * *

    "I have the honour to be, my Lord,
    "Your very faithful Servant,
    "M. Faraday."

Sometimes people's views on these matters change when the despised distinction is actually offered, but it was not so with him; for once, when indirectly sounded as to whether a knighthood would be acceptable, he declined the honour, preferring to "remain plain Michael Faraday to the last."

In this day, when so many allow their names to be used for offices of which they never intended to discharge the duties, the following letter may convey an appropriate lesson: —

    "Royal Institution, Oct. 17th, 1849.

"My dear Percy,

"I cannot be on the committee; I avoid everything of that kind, that I may keep my stupid mind a little clear. As to being on a committee and not working, that is worse still. * * *

    "Ever yours and Mrs. Percy's,
    "M. Faraday."

It is well known that he waged implacable war with the Spiritualists. Eighteen years ago tables took to spinning mysteriously under the fingers of ladies and gentlemen who sat or stood around the animated furniture; much was said about a new force, much too about strange revelations from another sphere, but Faraday made a simple apparatus which convinced him and most others that the tables moved through the unconscious pressure of the hands that touched them. The account of this will be found in the Athenæum of July 2, 1853. Three weeks afterwards he wrote to his friend Schönbein: "I have not been at work except in turning the tables upon the table-turners, nor should I have done that, but that so many inquiries poured in upon me, that I thought it better to stop the inpouring flood by letting all know at once what my views and thoughts were. What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, – what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man! How full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities it is!" But the believers in these occult phenomena, some of them holding high positions about the Court, would not let him alone; and there are many indications of the annoyance and irritation they caused him. He declined to meet the professors of the mysterious art, and the following letter will serve to show the way in which he regarded them: —

    "Royal Institution, Nov. 1, 1864.

"Sir,

"I beg to thank you for your papers, but have wasted more thought and time on so-called spiritual manifestation than it has deserved. Unless the spirits are utterly contemptible, they will find means to draw my attention.

"How is it that your name is not signed to the testimony that you give? Are you doubtful even whilst you publish? I've no evidence that any natural or unnatural power is concerned in the phenomena that requires investigation or deserves it. If I could consult the spirits, or move them to make themselves honestly manifest, I would do it. But I cannot, and am weary of them.

    "I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,
    "M. Faraday."

There was once a strange statement put forth to the effect that Faraday said electricity was life.[15 - I myself once heard this advanced by an infidel lecturer on Paddington Green.] He himself denied it indignantly; but as most falsehoods are perversions of some truth, this one probably originated in his experiments on the Gymnotus. He felt an intense interest in those marine animals that give shocks, and sought "to identify the living power which they possess, with that which man can call into action from inert matter, and by him named electricity."[16 - "Electrical Researches," Series XV.] The most powerful of these is the Gymnotus, or electrical eel, and a live specimen of this creature, forty inches long, was secured by the Adelaide Gallery – a predecessor of the Polytechnic – in the summer of 1838. Four days after its arrival the poor creature lost an eye; for two months it could not be coaxed to eat either meat or fish, worms or frogs; but at last one day it killed and devoured four small fishes, and afterwards swallowed about a fish per diem. It was accustomed to swim round and round the tank, till a live fish was dropped in, when in some cases bending round its victim, it would discharge a shock that made the fish float on its back stunned and ready to be sucked into the jaws of its assailant.

Faraday examined this eel and the water around it, both with his hands and with special collectors of electricity, and satisfied himself not merely of the shock, which was easy enough, but of its power to deflect a galvanometer, to make a magnet, to effect chemical decomposition, and to give a spark. His account of the experiments terminates with some speculations on the connection of this animal electricity with nervous power; but there the matter rested. His own views were thus expressed to his friend Dumas: – "As living creatures produce heat, and a heat certainly identical with that of our hearths, why should they not produce electricity also, and an electricity in like manner identical with that of our machines? But if the heat produced during life, and necessary to life, is not life after all, why should electricity itself be life? Like heat, like chemical action, electricity is an implement of life, and nothing more."

Whether the belief that electricity is life would be inconsistent with the Christian faith or not, it is clear that when an infidel preacher asserts that Faraday held such an opinion, his assertion will influence few who are not already disposed to Materialism. Far more damaging is it to the cause of religion when her ministers repeat the assumption of the infidel that those who study the truths of nature are particularly prone to disbelieve. Yet such statements have been made, even with reference to Faraday. I have it on the best authority that one of the leading clergymen of the day, preaching on a special occasion from Peter's words, "The elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up," spoke in antagonism to scientific men, alluding to Faraday by name, and to his computation of the tremendous electrical forces that would be produced by sundering the elements of one drop of water. "They shall be confuted by their own element – fire," added the preacher, careless of the conclusion which his audience might legitimately draw from such a two-edged argument. The accuser of the men of science was much astonished when told after his sermon, by a brother clergyman, that Faraday and other eminent physicists of the day were believers in a divine revelation.

It may be doubted whether Faraday ever tried to form a definite idea of the relation in which the physical forces stand to the Supreme Intelligence, as Newton did, or his own friend Sir John Herschel; nor did he consider it part of his duty as a lecturer to look beyond the natural laws he was describing. His practice in this respect has been well described by the Rev. Professor Pritchard:[17 - "Analogies in the Progress of Nature and Grace," p. 121.]– "This great and good man never obtruded the strength of his faith upon those whom he publicly addressed; upon principle he was habitually reticent on such topics, because he believed they were ill suited for the ordinary assemblages of men. Yet on more than one occasion when he had been discoursing on some of the magnificent pre-arrangements of Divine Providence so lavishly scattered in nature, I have seen him struggle to repress the emotion which was visibly striving for utterance; and then, at the last, with one single far-reaching word, he would just hint at his meaning rather than express it. On such occasions he only who had ears to hear, could hear."

In his more familiar lectures to the cadets at Woolwich, however, he more than hinted at such elevated thoughts. In conversation, too, Faraday has been known to express his wonder that anyone should fail to recognize the constant traces of design; and in his writings there sometimes occur such passages as the following: – "When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature – when I think of that calm and tranquil balancing of their energies which enables elements most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of all!"

Faraday's journals abound with descriptions of "nature and human nature." He had evidently a keen eye for the beauties of scenery, and occasionally the objects around him suggested higher thoughts. Here are two instances taken from his notes of a Swiss tour in 1841: —

"Monday, 19th.– Very fine day; walk with dear Sarah on the lake side to Oberhofen, through the beautiful vineyards; very busy were the women and men in trimming the vines, stripping off leaves and tendrils from the fruit-bearing branches. The churchyard was beautiful, and the simplicity of the little remembrance-posts set upon the graves very pleasant. One who had been too poor to put up an engraved brass plate, or even a painted board, had written with ink on paper the birth and death of the being whose remains were below, and this had been fastened to a board, and mounted on the top of a stick at the head of the grave, the paper being protected by a little edge and roof. Such was the simple remembrance, but Nature had added her pathos, for under the shelter by the writing a caterpillar had fastened itself, and passed into its deathlike state of chrysalis, and, having ultimately assumed its final state, it had winged its way from the spot, and had left the corpse-like relics behind. How old and how beautiful is this figure of the resurrection! Surely it can never appear before our eyes without touching the thoughts."

"August 12th, Brienz Lake.– George and I crossed the lake in a boat to the Giessbach – he to draw, and I to saunter… This most beautiful fall consists of a fine river, which passes by successive steps down a very deep precipice into the lake. In some of these steps there is a clear leap of water of 100 feet or more, in others most beautiful combinations of leap, cataract, and rapid, the finest rocks occurring at the sides and bed of the torrent. In one part a bridge passes over it. In another a cavern and a path occur under it. To-day every fall was foaming from the abundance of water, and the current of wind brought down by it was in some parts almost too strong to stand against. The sun shone brightly, and the rainbows seen from various points were very beautiful. One at the bottom of a fine but furious fall was very pleasant. There it remained motionless, whilst the gusts and clouds of spray swept furiously across its place, and were dashed against the rock. It looked like a spirit strong in faith and stedfast in the midst of the storm of passions sweeping across it; and though it might fade and revive, still it held on to the rock as in hope and giving hope; and the very drops which in the whirlwind of their fury seemed as if they would carry all away, were made to revive it and give it greater beauty.

"How often are the things we fear and esteem as troubles made to become blessings to those who are led to receive them with humility and patience."

In concluding this section it may be well to string together a few gems from Faraday's lectures or correspondence, though they are greatly damaged by being torn away from their original setting: —

"After all, though your science is much to me, we are not friends for science sake only, but for something better in a man, something more important in his nature, affection, kindness, good feeling, moral worth; and so, in remembrance of these, I now write to place myself in your presence, and in thought shake hands, tongues, and hearts together." This was addressed to Schönbein.

"I should be glad to think that high mental powers insured something like a high moral sense, but have often been grieved to see the contrary: as also, on the other hand, my spirit has been cheered by observing in some lowly and uninstructed creature such a healthful and honourable and dignified mind as made one in love with human nature. When that which is good mentally and morally meet in one being, that that being is more fitted to work out and manifest the glory of God in the creation, I fully admit."

"Let me, as an old man who ought by this time to have profited by experience, say that when I was younger I found I often misinterpreted the intentions of people, and found they did not mean what at the time I supposed they meant; and further, that as a general rule, it was better to be a little dull of apprehension when phrases seemed to imply pique, and quick in perception when, on the contrary, they seemed to imply kindly feeling. The real truth never fails ultimately to appear; and opposing parties, if wrong, are sooner convinced when replied to forbearingly, than when overwhelmed."

"Man is an improving animal. Unlike the animated world around him, which remains in the same constant state, he is continually varying; and it is one of the noblest prerogatives of his nature, that in the highest of earthly distinctions he has the power of raising and exalting himself continually. The transitory state of man has been held up to him as a memento of his weakness: to man degraded it may be so with justice; to man as he ought to be it is no reproach; and in knowledge, that man only is to be contemned and despised who is not in a state of transition."

"It is not the duty or place of a philosopher to dictate belief, and all hypothesis is more or less matter of belief; he has but to give his facts and his conclusions, and so much of the logic which connects the former with the latter as he may think necessary, and then to commit the whole to the scientific world for present, and, as he may sometimes without presumption believe, for future judgment."

SECTION IV

HIS METHOD OF WORKING

It is on record that when a young aspirant asked Faraday the secret of his success as a scientific investigator, he replied, "The secret is comprised in three words – Work, Finish, Publish."

Each of these words, we may be sure, is full of meaning, and will guide us in a useful inquiry.

Already in the "Story of his Life" we have caught some glimpses of the philosopher at work in his laboratory; but before looking at him more closely let us learn from a foreigner with what feelings to enter a place that is hallowed by so many memories sacred in the history of science. Professor Schönbein, of Basle, who visited England in 1840, says: "During my stay in London, I once worked with Faraday for a whole day long in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, and I cannot forbear to say that this was one of the most enjoyable days that I ever spent in the British capital. We commenced our day's work with breakfast; and when that was over, I was supplied with one of the laboratory dresses of my friend, which, when I was presented in it to the ladies, gave occasion to no little amusement, as the dimensions of Faraday are different from those of my precious body.

"To work with a man like Faraday was in itself a great pleasure; but this pleasure was not a little heightened in doing so in a place where such grand secrets of nature had been unfolded, the most brilliant discoveries of the century had been made, and entirely new branches of knowledge had been brought forth. For the empty intellect circumstances of this nature are indeed of little special value; but they stand in quite another relation to our power of imagination and inner nature.

"I do not deny that my surroundings produced in me a very peculiar feeling; and whilst I trod the floor upon which Davy had once walked – whilst I availed myself of some instrument which this great discoverer had himself handled – whilst I stood working at the very table at which the ever-memorable man sought to solve the most difficult problems of science, at which Faraday enticed the first sparks out of the magnet, and discovered the most beautiful laws of the chemical action of current electricity, I felt myself inwardly elevated, and believed that I myself experienced something of the inbreathing of the scientific spirit which formerly ruled there with such creative power, and which still works on."[18 - "Mittheilungen aus dem Reisetagebuche eines deutschen Naturforschers," p. 275.]

The habit of Faraday was to think out carefully beforehand the subject on which he was working, and to plan his mode of attack. Then, if he saw that some new piece of apparatus was needed, he would describe it fully to the instrument maker with a drawing, and it rarely happened that there was any need of alteration in executing the order. If, however, the means of experiment existed already, he would give Anderson a written list of the things he would require, at least a day before – for Anderson was not to be hurried. When all was ready, he would descend into the laboratory, give a quick glance round to see that all was right, take his apron from the drawer, and rub his hands together as he looked at the preparations made for his work. There must be no tool on the table but such as he required. As he began, his face would be exceedingly grave, and during the progress of an experiment all must be perfectly quiet; but if it was proceeding according to his wish, he would commence to hum a tune, and sometimes to rock himself sideways, balancing alternately on either foot. Then, too, he would often talk to his assistant about the result he was expecting. He would put away each tool in its own place as soon as done with, or at any rate when the day's work was over, and he would not unnecessarily take a thing away from its place: thus, if he wanted a perforated cork, he would go to the drawer which contained the corks and cork-borers, make there what he wanted, replace the borers, and shut the drawer. No bottle was allowed to remain without its stopper; no open glass might stand for a night without a paper cover; no rubbish was to be left on the floor; bad smells were to be avoided if possible; and machinery in motion was not permitted to grate. In working, also, he was very careful not to employ more force than was wanted to produce the effect. When his experiments were finished and put away, he would leave the laboratory, and think further about them upstairs.

This orderliness and this economy of means he not only practised himself, but he expected them also to be followed by any who worked with him; and it is from conversation with these that I have been enabled to give this sketch of his manner of working.[19 - Since the publication of the first edition I have been struck with how precisely his practice corresponded with his precept in the introduction to his book on "Chemical Manipulation: " – "When an experiment has been devised, its general nature and principles arranged in the mind, and the causes to be brought into action, with the effect to be expected, properly considered, then it has to be performed. The ultimate objects of an experiment, and also the particular contrivance or mode by which the results are to be produced, being mental, there remains the mere performance of it, which may properly enough be expressed by the term manipulation."Notwithstanding this subordinate character of manipulation, it is yet of high importance in an experimental science, and particularly in chemistry. The person who could devise only, without knowing how to perform, would not be able to extend his knowledge far, or make it useful; and where every doubt or question that arises in the mind is best answered by the result of an experiment, whatever enables the philosopher to perform the experiment in the simplest, quickest, and most direct manner, cannot but be esteemed by him as of the utmost value."]

This exactness was also apparent in the accounts he kept with the Royal Institution and Trinity House, in which he entered every little item of expenditure with the greatest minuteness of detail.

It was through this lifelong series of experiments that Faraday won his knowledge and mastered the forces of nature. The rare ingenuity of his mind was ably seconded by his manipulative skill, while the quickness of his perceptions was equalled by the calm rapidity of his movements.

He had indeed a passion for experimenting. This peeps out in the preface to the second edition of his "Chemical Manipulation," where he writes, "Being intended especially as a book of instruction, no attempts were made to render it pleasing, otherwise than by rendering it effectual; for I concluded that, if the work taught clearly what it was intended to inculcate, the high interest always belonging to a well-made or successful experiment would be abundantly sufficient to give it all the requisite charms, and more than enough to make it valuable in the eyes of those for whom it was designed."