The maxim current among European scientists, that it is well to wait before accepting any scientific discovery to see what will be said about it on the other side of the Rhine, throws a rather curious sidelight on the supposed absoluteness of scientific knowledge. Gallic enthusiasm or German subtlety may evolve plausible theories that look like scientific discoveries, but the destructive criticism of the neighbor nation usually saves the scientific world from deception. Not infrequently, the English-speaking scientists held the balance between these rivals in the intellectual world, and their adhesion to either party or side of a question secured its dominance. When all three, Germans and French and English, are agreed as to the value of a scientific discovery, then it may be looked upon as having some of the absoluteness, or at least possesses for the moment the finality of scientific truth. If this triple agreement be taken as the criterion of the significance of a great scientist's work, then must Michael Faraday be considered as without doubt one of the greatest scientists of our time, and probably the greatest experimental scientist that the world has known.

Dubois Reymond, in Berlin, declared Faraday "the greatest experimentalist of all times, and the greatest physical discoverer that ever lived." Professor Martius said before the Academy of Sciences at Munich, "Deservedly has Faraday been called the greatest experimenter of his epoch, and that the greatest epoch of scientific experimentation down to our time." Dumas, the French chemist, in the panegyric delivered before the French Academy of Sciences, declared that Faraday was "the greatest scientific scholar that the Academy ever possessed." In order to give a picture of what he had accomplished in electricity, added Dumas, one would have to write a complete treatise on that subject. "There is nothing in this department of science that Faraday has not investigated completely or very materially modified. Much of this chapter of our modern science is his creation and belongs undeniably to him." Beside these testimonies from French and German scientific contemporaries must be placed Tyndall's appreciation, which sets forth his brother scientist's merits. "Take him all in all," he said, "it must be admitted, I think, that Michael Faraday was the greatest experimental scientist that the world has ever seen."

Nor did these magnificent appreciations of Faraday cease when the enthusiasm for his memory, immediately after his death, had faded somewhat into sober realization of his merits. When Dumas summed up Faraday in the first Faraday lecture of the English Chemical Society, he said: "Faraday was a type of the most fortunate and the most accomplished of the learned men of our age. His hand, in the execution of his conceptions, kept pace with his mind in designing them; he never wanted boldness when he undertook an experiment, never lacked resources to insure success, and was full of discretion when interpreting results. His hardihood, which never halted once he had undertaken a task, and his wariness, which felt its way carefully in adopting a received conclusion, will ever serve as models for the experimentalist."

It is evident that the life of Faraday should be of supreme interest for a generation that is mainly interested in experimental science, and it so happens that his career contains many other sources of interest; for Faraday was a self-made man, who owed very little to anyone but himself and his own genius. Besides, he was a deep thinker with regard to all the problems of human life as well as those of science, and while he was a genial, kindly friend to those near him, the charming associate whom scientific intimates always welcomed, he had no illusions with regard to life being the end of all things, but looked confidently to the hereafter, and shaped his life here from that point of view.

Michael Faraday was born at Newington Butts, now called Stoke Newington, an outskirt of London, in Surrey, September 22d, 1791. His father was a journeyman blacksmith whose health was not very good, and as a consequence, the family suffered not a little from poverty. Both his parents were noted for their good habits, industrious lives and deep religious feelings. In spite of their poverty, as is much oftener the case than is sometimes thought, their children were brought up very carefully and had a precious training in high principles. Like most of his great colleagues in scientific discovery, Faraday had to begin to earn his livelihood early in life. Of educational opportunities he had practically none. He learned to read and write, and probably had a certain slight training in doing simple sums in arithmetic, but that was the extent of his formal teaching, and much of that he got at home. He had to help in the support of his family, and so it seemed fortunate that not far away from his home there was a bookstore and bindery, the owner of which became interested in the Faradays and took Michael as an errand boy when he was scarcely thirteen years of age.

It was here that the future scientist began his education for himself and, strange as it may seem, laid the deep foundation of his knowledge of science. For the first year he carried newspapers around to the customers, and did his work so faithfully that at the end of this time the book-binder offered to take him as an apprentice to the trade, without the usual premium which used to be rather strictly required for teaching boys their trades at that time. Faraday accepted this offer, but proved to be interested much more than in the outsides of the books he bound. Whatever of leisure there was he took advantage of to read a number of works on experimental science that happened to be in the shop. Luckily for him, some of these were classics. As an introduction to chemistry, he had Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Chemistry" and Robert Boyle's "Notes about the Producibleness of chimicall Principles." He was even more interested in electricity than in chemistry, however, and Lyons' "Experiments on Electricity" and the article on electricity in the Encyclopedia Britannica, whetted his interest and made the boy wish for more of such information. There probably could not be a better proof of the fact that, a man who really has intellectual interests will find the material with which to satisfy them, in spite of untoward circumstances, than this boyish experience of Faraday.

It is a curious anticipation of Faraday's after-career that he at once began to demonstrate by personal experiment some of the statements that he found in the books. He procured a stock of chemicals as far as his meagre salary would allow, and constructed a practical electrical machine, though he had nothing better than a large glass bottle to serve as a cylinder for it. When not yet fourteen, he noticed an advertisement of a set of lectures on natural philosophy. He was at once taken with the idea of going to them, but the price of admission, one shilling, seemed to place them entirely beyond him. His elder brother, who followed his father's trade of blacksmith, had more money than he, and, when properly cajoled, was persuaded to provide the necessary shillings, and so Faraday got to the lectures. Elder brothers do not often have to lend shillings to their juniors for admission to scientific lectures now any more than in Faraday's time, so that the incident seems worth noting.

In attendance at these lectures, Faraday not only learned much that was new to him in science, but met a number of earnest fellow-students and formed some life-long friendships. He took copious notes, and afterwards wrote them out in a fine, legible hand, making excellent drawings in perspective of the apparatus employed in the experiments. His notes were so extensive that Faraday bound them himself, in four volumes, with an index. These volumes are still preserved in the library of the Royal Institution as one of the precious treasures among its Faraday relics.[29] The whole story of these early years of Faraday's life is a series of illustrations of how a young man without the necessary opportunities for his favorite studies can make them for himself. Everything seemed to be against his acquiring a thorough knowledge of science, yet he succeeded in creating for himself the equivalent of a good scientific course out of his meagre chances to hear lectures and read books on his favorite subject in the intervals of a busy life as book-seller and book-binder.

Things did not always continue to run along as pleasantly in life for young Faraday as while he was working for his book-binder friend as an apprentice. With the conclusion of his apprenticeship he became a journeyman book-binder, and his first employer proved to be a hard task-master. It did not matter how much work Faraday did or how well, it never quite satisfied this French ÉmigrÉ, until it is no wonder that Faraday looked for another occupation. For a time, he had the congenial occupation of acting as amanuensis for Sir Humphry Davy, who, while working on a new violent explosive, probably chloride of hydrogen, met with an accident which prevented him from using his eyes for some time. This occupation, pleasant and even alluring as it was, lasted only for a few days, however. It had the fortunate result of suggesting to Faraday to apply to Sir Humphry Davy in person for a position not long after, and it eventually brought him the position of assistant at the Royal Institution.

His anxiety to secure this post had been increased by the growing realization that a business life was not to his liking. It seemed to him a waste of time, or worse, for a man to give himself up to the making of money. Even thus young he had the ambition to add to the knowledge possessed by mankind, and the insatiable desire to increase the opportunities of others to learn whatever they were interested in. Accordingly, he set about finding the chance to devote himself entirely to science.

In writing years after to Dr. Paris, he says: "My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of science, which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir Humphry Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in his way, he should favor my views; and at the same time I sent the notes I had taken of his lectures." Davy called, not long after, on one of his friends, who was at the time honorary inspector of the models and apparatus at the Royal Institution, and with the letter before him asked: "Here is a letter from a young man named Faraday; he has been attending my lectures and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution. What can I do?" "Do?" replied the inspector; "put him to wash bottles. If he is good for anything, he will do it directly; if he refuses, he is good for nothing." "No, no," replied Davy, "we must try him with something better than that."

Davy wrote a kind reply, and arranged for an interview with young Faraday. In this, however, he candidly advised him to stick to his business, telling him very plainly that "science was a harsh mistress, and, from a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarded those who devoted themselves to her service." He apparently put an end to all further consideration of the subject by promising Faraday the book-binding work of the Institution, and his own besides.

Faraday was not satisfied to go back to the book-shop, even with all this kindly patronage, but there was nothing else for it, and so for a time he continued at his duties and spent his spare moments reading science and his evenings at scientific lectures, or in remaking the experiments he had seen and others suggested by them, and above all in rewriting the notes that he had taken. There is no livelier picture in all the history of science, of how a man will, in spite of all obstacles, get the things he cares for, if he really cares for them, than that of Faraday thus teaching himself science in the face of what seems almost insurmountable discouragement. Fortunately, not long after he had been thus forcibly called to the attention of Sir Humphry Davy, the former assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution not only neglected his duties, but became a source of considerable annoyance. His misfortune proved Faraday's opportunity. He was offered the post. The salary was only twenty-five shillings a week, but he accepted it very willingly. One might think that at last his scientific career was opened for him, but his new post was no sinecure. The labors required from him, indeed, were so manifold that it is somewhat surprising that he found any time for his own improvement. His duties as set forth in writing were:

"To attend and assist the lecturers and professors preparing for and during lectures. Where any instruments or apparatus may be required, to attend to their careful removal from the model room and laboratory to the lecture room, and to clean and replace them after being used, reporting to the managers such accidents as shall require repair, a constant diary being kept by him for that purpose. That in one day in each week he be employed in keeping clean the models in the repository, and that all the instruments in the glass cases be cleaned and dusted at least once within a month."

The previous assistant had complained of the amount of work that was required of him. It is easy to see that his duties were rather exacting and time-taking. Faraday did not confine himself to them, though he did perform them with great assiduity. His interest in experimental chemistry was soon noted, and he was allowed to take his share in the experiments going on in the laboratory. Some of his first work was the extraction of sugar from beet-root; but he was soon to have abundant experience of the deterring side of chemistry. Not long after he began his work in the laboratory, he had to manufacture some bisulphide of carbon, one of the most nauseating of compounds. He found it disgusting enough as an experience, but the study of it brought its compensation.

It was much more than foul odors that Faraday had to encounter, for Davy was still occupying himself with the study of the explosives, in the investigation of which he had been injured the previous year. Faraday suffered from four or five explosions during the course of the first month or two of his employment. Indeed, the substance with which they were experimenting proved so unreliable in this regard that, after a second rather serious injury to Davy, further study of it was given up.

Once Faraday had secured his post at the Royal Institution, his life-work was before him, and he became deeply engaged in scientific speculations, investigations and experiments of all kinds. The young man who had found and made opportunities when they were so distant and difficult, now made use of all that were so ready at hand. He did not confine himself to his laboratory work, however, but seems always to have felt that the contact of minds engaged along the same lines was the best possible way to be stimulated to knowledge. He applied and was admitted as member of the Philosophical Society of London, an association of some two score of men occupied with many things during the day, but interested in science, so far as they could get the books and the opportunities for its study. They met every Wednesday evening and discussed various subjects in science or, as they called it then, in philosophy, and they seem to have occupied themselves with many questions in the social as well as the natural sciences. These men, most of whom were older than Faraday, soon came to look up to him because of the depth and increasing breadth of his knowledge, and we have some emphatic expressions of their admiration for him.

Faraday's earliest successful scientific investigation was accomplished in chemistry. This might have been expected, from the fact that he began his work with Sir Humphry Davy, whose principal scientific investigations had been concerned with chemistry. His own great scientific work was to be done in electricity. Even in the brief time that he devoted to chemistry, however, he succeeded in making some discoveries of deep significance. For instance, in his special study of chlorine, he demonstrated the existence of the two chlorides of carbon which had not hitherto been obtained. Above all, he impressed his personality upon methods in chemistry. He was the first to realize how much technics were to mean in the modern advancement of science, and he made methodic chemistry, in distinction from practical chemistry, the object of very special study. His work on Chemical Manipulation did more to train successful students of chemistry and to make good investigators in this department of science than any other single work in his generation. It has continued to be of interest down even to our own time, and is well worthy of consultation by all those who are interested in chemistry as a science, and especially in original research in that subject.

It was with regard to gases, however, that Faraday's most striking chemical work was done. He succeeded in liquefying several gases, and was the first to make clear that all matter could probably exist in each of the three different states—solid, liquid and gaseous—according as the proper conditions for each particular state were present. One might almost have expected that the serious dangers incurred in his early days in the Royal Institution, when his chief, Sir Humphry Davy, suffered so severely and he himself was more than once involved, might have deterred him from further investigation along similar lines; but Faraday's ardor for scientific investigation overcame any hesitancy there might have been. The effect of gases upon human beings proved as attractive to Faraday as it had been to Davy. His experiments upon chlorine threatened to prove seriously injurious to his throat, and he was warned of the danger that he was running in the effort to determine whether such gases were respirable and what their effects upon human beings were. The warning was disregarded, however, though he exercised somewhat more care in subsequent observations. His experiments in the respiration of gases finally led him to a discovery of cardinal importance in the very practical field of anÆsthesia. Sir Humphry Davy, just at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had made a series of interesting experiments on nitrous oxide gas, the so-called "laughing gas," and had pointed out very definitely its anÆsthetic properties. While suffering from toothache he had inhaled the gas, and had experienced prompt alleviation of the pain. He described in detail these curious effects, and suggested that there might be a place for nitrous oxide in surgery, at least for minor operations. The words he employed with regard to this subject show that the idea of anÆsthesia, as we now understand it, had come to him very definitely. Not quite a score of years later, Faraday, recalling the experiments of Davy with nitrous oxide, studied sulphuric ether, and showed that the inhalation of the vapor of this substance produced anÆsthetic effects very similar to those of nitrous oxide gas, but with the possibility of prolonging them much more easily and apparently with less danger than would be the case with the latter. In every history of anÆsthesia, these two sets of experiments at the Royal Institution must be set down as foundation-stones, and Faraday's name particularly must be hailed as one of the initiators of a supremely beneficent advance in modern surgery.

Faraday had given up business to devote himself to science, and he was not to be seduced from the purpose of making his life unselfish and doing things, not for money, but for the good of science and his own satisfaction. As a practical chemist, he soon had many opportunities to increase his salary by making analyses for industrial purposes. During one year, the amount of work thus offered him was paid for so well that it formed an addition of some £500 sterling to his salary. It took away precious time, however, that he might otherwise devote to original work. As soon as Faraday realized this possibility of interference with his scientific investigations, he cut it off, quite content to live on the modest salary of his position at the Royal Institution. His action in the matter would remind one very much of Pasteur, in the latter half of the century, when asked by the Empress EugÉnie, to whom he had been just exhibiting his discoveries in fermentation, whether he would not apply these to actual manufacture and so make a fortune for himself in brewing. Pasteur replied that he thought it unworthy of a French scientist to devote his time to money-making, with all the world of science open before him.[30]

With a conscientious patriotism, however, that was typical of the man and his ways, there was one exception to this rule of not taking outside work that Faraday made. In a letter to Lord Auckland, long afterward, he says: "I have given up for the last ten years or more, all professional occupation and voluntarily resigned a large income, that I might pursue in some degree my own objects of research. But in doing this I have always, as a good subject, held myself ready to assist the government if still in my power, but not for pay; for, except in one instance (and then only for the sake of the person joined with me), I refused to take it. I have had the honor and pleasure of application, and that very recently, from the Admiralty, the Ordnance, the Home Office, the Woods and Forests and other departments, all of which I have replied to and will reply to as long as strength is left me."

As we have said, Faraday's principal work was accomplished in the domain of electricity. His supreme discovery, and, indeed, the most important practical discovery in the whole realm of electricity, was that of the induction effect of a current of electricity on a neighboring circuit. This was accomplished by experimental work of the highest order. Toward the end of 1824, when he was about thirty-three, he came to the definite conclusion that an electric current might be obtained by the motion of a magnet. His mind had been prepared for such a conclusion by Oersted's significant discovery in July, 1820, that an electric current acts somewhat like a magnet when the wire through which it flows is free to move. This discovery, definitely connecting electricity and magnetism, had been elaborated to an important degree by AmpÈre, and its sphere of application broadened by Wollaston. The curious though not unusual result in such cases, that it is not those who are in immediate touch with a great discoverer who develop or even apply his work, was illustrated by the fact that AmpÈre, the Frenchman, took up Oersted's discovery first, while Wollaston, working in England, had been the next one to follow successfully in the path thus opened up. It takes genius to go even a slight step farther into the unknown; the trained talent of disciples does not suffice. It was now Faraday, though not under Wollaston's influence, who was to continue successfully these labors.

In spite of his persuasion that a magnet would produce by induction an electric current, and the further step that a current in one wire could induce a current in another, experiments during seven years had brought him very little nearer the actual demonstration of this important principle. Those who think that great discoveries are made by accident and almost fall into the laps of their makers, as the apple upon Newton, should recall these seven years of unsuccessful labor on the part of Faraday. Finally, in 1831, he obtained the first definite evidence that an electric current can induce another in a different circuit. The discovery meant so much for him, that he hesitated to believe in his own success. Nearly a month after this first demonstration for himself, he wrote to his friend Phillips: "I am busy just now again on electro-magnetism, and think I have got hold of a good thing, but can't say. It may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labor, I may at last pull up."

He had long suspected, as we have said, that induction should occur, and he had tried currents of different strength, but without result. One day he noticed that, though he could not produce a permanent induced current, whenever the primary current started or stopped, there was a movement of the galvanometer connected with the secondary circuit, though the galvanometer remained at zero so long as the primary current flowed steadily. From this he proceeded to the demonstration that a bar magnet suddenly thrust into a helix of copper wire produced the same effect on the galvanometer, and evidently induced a transient current. When the magnet was withdrawn, the galvanometer needle swung in the opposite direction, showing another current, so that electrical currents were evidently induced by the relative motions of a magnet and a conductor. He continued his experiments in many different forms, and in the short space of a little more than a week, once the first definite hint was obtained, succeeded in so completely finding out the phenomena of electro-magnetic induction that scarcely more than practical applications in this subject were left for his successors.

Faraday's explanation of the induction of currents in the secondary circuit was probably quite as important a contribution to science as the series of experiments by which he demonstrated the occurrence of induced currents. His mind was not of the order that would accept action at a distance; that is, without some conducting medium through which the action took place. The old aphorism of the scholastics, "actio in distans repugnat"—action at a distance, that is, without a medium intervening, is absurd—would have appealed to him as a basic truth. The explanation that he outlined for induced currents was based on the lines of magnetic force, which he had so often delineated by means of iron filings. It was a favorite occupation of his, at moments of comparative leisure, to make varied pictures in iron filings of magnetic fields as they were exhibited under the influence of different combinations of magnets. He strewed iron filings over "gum paper," and then when the filings had arranged themselves in certain definite lines, he threw a jet of steam on the paper, which melted the gum and fixed the filings in position. He explained electrical action as the transmission of force along such lines as these, and he thought the whole electric field was filled with them.

Probably the best summary of Faraday's work on induction and its significance has been given us by Clerk Maxwell, in his article on Faraday, in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. There is no doubt but that Maxwell, above all men of the nineteenth century, was in a position to judge of the meaning of Faraday's work. He was not the sort of a man to say things in a panegyric mood, and his article on Faraday is indeed a model of well-considered judgment and critical illumination. Summing up the significance not only of Faraday's great discovery of induction, but also his theory in explanation of that discovery, he does not hesitate to say that his (Faraday's) opinion is the nearest approach to truth that has been advanced in this much-discussed subject.

"After nearly half a century of labor of this kind, we may say that, though the practical applications of Faraday's great discovery have increased and are increasing in number and value every year, no exception to the statement of these laws as given by Faraday has been discovered; no new law has been added to them; and Faraday's original statement remains to this day the only one which asserts no more than can be verified by experiment, and the only one by which the theory of the phenomena can be expressed in a manner which is actually and numerically accurate, and at the same time within the range of elementary methods of exposition."

With what eminent care and absolute truth Faraday's conclusions were reached may be judged from some further expressions of Clerk Maxwell's in the article just quoted, with regard to the attitude of certain mathematicians toward Faraday's work. In this matter, Clerk Maxwell, in talking on a theme that he had made especially his own, and in which his opinion must carry the greatest possible weight, said:

"Up to the present time, the mathematicians who have rejected Faraday's method of stating his law as unworthy of the precision of their science, have never succeeded in devising any essentially different formula which shall fully express the phenomena, without introducing the hypotheses about the mutual action of things which have no physical existence, such as elements of currents, which flow out of nothing, then along the wire, and finally sink into nothing again."

Faraday's results were described in papers afterwards incorporated in his first series of "Experimental Researches," which were read before the Royal Society, November 24th, 1841. These papers probably contain the best possible proof of Faraday's genius as an experimentalist and a leader in scientific observation. Within a few months after his first successful experiment, he had succeeded in bringing to perfection the whole doctrine of induction by currents and magnets, had laid down the fundamental ideas which were to constitute the formal basis of electro-magnetism for all time. Perhaps no better idea of the importance of the discovery thus made by Faraday can be given than will be found in Clerk Maxwell's compendious paragraph on this subject, in his sketch of Faraday, in the Encyclopedia Britannica. It may be said that no one in all the nineteenth century was more capable of appreciating properly the value of Faraday's work than this great electrical mathematician, who laid the firm foundation of mathematical electricity during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Clerk Maxwell says:

"This was of course a great triumph, and nobody appreciated this fact better than Faraday himself, who had been working at its problems for many years. One of the first problems that he had set himself in his note-book as a young man, was 'to convert magnetism into electricity,' and this he had now done. Within a month of the time that his first successful experiment was formed, he succeeded in obtaining induction currents by means of the earth's magnetism. Within a year he took the further immense step of obtaining a spark from the induced current. This would ordinarily have seemed quite impossible, since sparks occur only if the electromotive force is very high, and it was very low in his induced currents. He found, however, that if the circuit of wire in which a current was flowing is broken while the current is passing, a little bridge of metallic vapor is formed, across which the spark leaps. The difficulty with the experiment was to break the circuit during the extremely short period while the current is flowing. Faraday succeeded in doing this, and as a result obtained the first germ of the electric light. When he demonstrated this experiment by a very ingenious apparatus at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, all were deeply interested, yet probably no one, even the most sanguine of the scientists present, thought for a moment that they saw the beginning of a far-reaching revolution of all the lighting of the world."

Perhaps the most interesting of Faraday's discoveries, from the scientific standpoint, because they throw so much light on the problems of all the related phenomena of magnetism, heat, light, even electricity, were those in which a ray of polarized light was used as a means of investigating the condition of transparent bodies when acted on by electric and magnetic forces. Faraday himself, when he was just thirty years of age, made a note in his commonplace laboratory book, in which all his observations were carefully detailed, that serves to show how much this subject had begun to interest him thus early in his career. He mentions that he had polarized a ray of lamp-light by reflection, and had made various experiments to ascertain whether any depolarizing action was exerted on it by water placed between the poles of a voltaic battery in a glass cistern, or by various fluids which were decomposed by the voltaic action during the course of the experiment. Besides water, the fluids used were weak solutions of sulphate of soda and strong sulphuric acid. None of them had any effect on the polarized light, either during the passage of the voltaic current or when this was shut off. No particular arrangement of particles in reference to polarized light could be found from these observations.

Such a note, with utter failure for conclusion, is common enough in Faraday's note-book. He was never discouraged, however, by failure at the beginning. Once a subject has been taken up seriously, it is almost inevitable that further observations with regard to it will be found during the course of the year. Because he had asked one question of nature and had not obtained a satisfactory answer, was never a reason why he should not ask further questions along the same line; and, above all, why he should not ask the same question in another way. After having tried a continuous current, Faraday next experimented on the effect of making and breaking the circuit. He did not expect very much from this, but he hoped that under circumstances when no decomposition would ensue as the effect of the current, he might find some indication of the polarization. It was nearly twenty-five years before Faraday succeeded in solving the problem that he had thus set himself as a young man, and nearly twenty years more were to pass before he made the relation between magnetism and light the subject of his very last experimental work. Nothing discouraged him. When he had resolved to investigate something, he continued to make his experiments over and over again in different ways, until finally he got an answer to his question and a solution to the problem.

Indeed, his perseverance in anything that he undertook was a striking characteristic of the man and one of the most important elements in his success in life. His tenacity of purpose showed itself equally in little as in great things. Arranging some apparatus one day with a philosophical instrument-maker, he let fall on the floor a small piece of glass. He made several ineffectual attempts to pick it up. "Never mind," said his companion, "it is not worth the trouble." "Well, but, Murray, I don't like to be beaten by something that I have once tried to do."

Faraday was sure that there was some very definite relation between electricity and light. His experiments, however, did not enable him to demonstrate this until nearly fifteen years after his successful experiment on induction. In September, 1845, he placed a piece of heavy glass made of silico-borate of lead in the field of a magnet, and found that, when a beam of polarized light was transmitted through the glass in the direction of the lines of force, there was a rotation of the plane of polarization. Later experiments showed him that all transparent solids and liquids were capable of producing this rotation in greater or less degree. When no magnet was used and the transparent substance was placed within a coil of wire through which an electric current was flowing, similar effects were produced. This was the demonstration of a definite relation between light and electricity. Later, Faraday found that magnets had a directive action upon the glass. He then made experiments upon gases, and found that they too exhibited magnetic phenomena, and that, indeed, the diurnal variations of the compass-needle were due to the sun's heat diminishing the magnetic permeability of the oxygen of the air. Further experiments with gases showed him that nitrogen was absolutely neutral in its reaction.

It might have been expected, from Faraday's early interest in chemistry, that when he turned to electricity and made discoveries in that field of research, he would naturally take up the problem of tracing the laws and demonstrating the relationships of the points of contact of the two great sciences. After his completion, then, of the subject of induction, Faraday devoted himself to the experimental proof of the identity of frictional and voltaic electricity, and to showing that chemistry and physics have a common ground. His inductive electrical machine could deflect a magnet and decompose iodide of potash. With his tendency to measure things, he determined that the amount of electricity required to decompose a grain of water was equal to 800,000 charges of his large battery of Leyden jars. On the other hand, the current from a frictional machine deflected the needle of his galvanometer in the same way as the induced current of electricity, so that all the elements of the proof of the identity of the two forms of phenomena were now in his hands.

That he should have proceeded to the demonstration of the laws of electrolysis, was the next most natural result. He showed that the amount of any compound decomposed by the electric current is exactly proportional to the whole quantity of electricity which has passed through the electrolyte. Different substances are variously refractory to dissolution under the influence of the electric current, but each one always acts in the same way and requires the same amount of current. Substances that are closely related to one another chemically, are also related to one another in the amount of electricity required to bring about decomposition of their various compounds. He showed, of course, that there are differences of electrical relationship that make the results produced in the decomposition of various compounds very different. Polarization, for instance, sets in to a much greater degree in the decomposition of some substances than of others. One consequence is that the resistance to the passage of the electric current differs markedly, and the opposing electromotive force will stop the current or hamper its effects in many cases, so that, until after actual experiment, the quantitative effect of the passage of the electric current through a solution cannot be determined.

Faraday's opinions as to the significance of electricity in the animal economy are very interesting because of his profound knowledge of electrical phenomena and their place in nature. It is all the more interesting because it is so simple, and most scientists would be apt to say that its very simplicity is a very taking argument for its truth. "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? Like heat, like chemical action, electricity is an implement of life, and nothing more."

While Faraday often occupied himself with subjects connected with matter and force that are likely to remain mysteries for long after his time, and often had thoughts to express with regard to the nature of atoms and of imponderable agents, whatever he had to say about these subjects was not vague and speculative, but, on the contrary, was concrete and usually of such a practical character as to add something new to our knowledge of them. Few men have ever succeeded in getting closer to the mysteries that underlie natural phenomena than Faraday; yet no one was ever less carried away into vague theoretic speculations with regard to them, nor tempted to think that because he knew much more than most other men with regard to complex natural problems, that therefore he knew enough to be able to solve the mysteries that existed all around him. He had none at all of what would ordinarily be called pride of intellect, but, on the contrary, had the humility of the true scientist. Knowing so much only made him realize more poignantly how much he was ignorant of. With regard to his speculations on matter and force and the imponderables, Helmholtz, the great German physicist, once summed up Faraday's contributions very succinctly in a way to show the practical nature of Faraday's intellect. He said:

"It is these things that Faraday in his mature works ever seeks to purify more and more from everything that is theoretical and is not the direct and simple expression of the fact. For instance, he contended against the action of forces at a distance, and the adoption of two electrical and two magnetic fluids, as well as all hypotheses contrary to the law of the conservation of force, which he early foresaw, though he misunderstood it in its scientific expression. And it is just in this direction that he exercised the most unmistakable influence, first of all, on the English physicist, and then on the physicists of all the world."

Inventors and promoters of useful inventions, frequently benefited by the advice of Faraday or by his general help. A remarkable instance of this was told by Mr. Cyrus W. Field. At the commencement of his great enterprise, when he wished to unite the Old and the New World by the telegraphic cable, he sought the advice of the great electrician, and Faraday told him that he doubted the possibility of getting a message across the Atlantic. Mr. Field saw that this fatal objection must be settled at once, and begged Faraday to make the necessary experiments, offering to pay him properly for his services. The philosopher, however, declined all remuneration, but worked away at the question, and presently reported to Mr. Field: "It can be done; but you will not get an instantaneous message." "How long will it take?" was the inquiry. "Oh! perhaps a second." "Well, that's quick enough for me," was the conclusion of the American; and the enterprise was proceeded with.

Faraday was far from being a mere laboratory student; he was much more even than a great teacher of physics. He was a magnificent popular lecturer, and did an incalculable amount to bring physics to the attention and the serious interest of his generation. A contemporary has described one of his lectures at the Royal Institution in such a way as to give us some idea, even at this distant date, of Faraday's power over his audience, of his own wonderful interest in the subject and his marvelous ability to communicate that interest to others. It was of the very nature of the man that he should not be cold and formal, for he was not a man of the head alone, but, above all, a man whose heart and affections were greatly developed, and he had powers of enthusiasm that placed him high among the artistic spirits of mankind. Our American poet, Stedman, once declared that the intellectual quality of the poet, the creator in the realm of thought, and of the scientist, the original worker in the domain of science, differed but little from one another, and must be considered as collateral expressions of the same form of intellectual genius. With this in mind, his contemporary's enthusiastic description of his lectures will not seem overdrawn.

"It was an irresistible eloquence, which compelled attention and insisted upon sympathy. It waked the young from their visions, and the old from their dreams. There was a gleaming in his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet could describe. Their radiance seemed to send a strange light into the very heart of his congregation; and when he spoke, it was felt that the stir of his voice and the fervor of his words could belong only to the owner of those kindling eyes. His thought was rapid, and made itself a way in new phrases, if it found none ready made, as the mountaineer cuts steps in the most hazardous ascent with his own axe. His enthusiasm sometimes carried him to the point of ecstasy."

Faraday's habit of testing opinions by experiment, and the frequent disillusions which he encountered with regard to things of which he thought he knew something definite, served to make him extremely careful as regards expressions of opinion. Some of his thoughts on this subject are worth while recalling because they remain perennially true, and anyone in any generation will find that, as his experience grows, he gets more and more into this Faraday mood of doubting his own opinion and listening with more readiness to that of others. As a rule, this is said not to be true of those who are in advancing years, but the greater minds among the older men do not get set in their ways. Flourens might have said that because of constant exercise the connective tissue in the brains of such men does not form to the same extent as in others, and does not make them case-hardened. As a consequence, they retain far on in years their sympathy for others' opinions and their openness of mind. Comparatively, they are so few, however, that this expression of Faraday's becomes a striking commentary on his large-mindedness.

"For proper self-education, it is necessary that a man examine himself, and that not carelessly either.... A first result of this habit of mind will be an internal conviction of ignorance in many things respecting which his neighbors are taught, and that his opinions and conclusions on such matters ought to be advanced with reservation. A mind so disciplined will be open to correction upon good grounds in all things, even in those it is best acquainted with, and should familiarize itself with the idea of such being the case."

Perhaps it is even more interesting, because more humanly sympathetic, to find that Faraday distrusted his opinions of people even more than his opinions of things, and that he himself tried to be very slow to take offence at what was said to him, and counselled greatest discretion to others in judging of the significance of supposed slights.

"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 that 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."

Few lives have been happier than that of Faraday. He gave up the ordinary ambition of men to make what is called a successful career of money-making, and constantly guarded himself from slipping back, as so many do, to the ruin of their original purpose. He lived a long life in peace, occupied with work that he liked above all things, and surely serves as the best illustration of the maxim: "Blessed is the man who has found his work." Work is said to be one of the primal curses laid upon man; but if, when the Creator would ban it turns to blessing in the way that work has done, then may one well ask what will His blessings prove. Faraday even had what is rarer in life than happiness, the consciousness of his happiness. Usually it is so elusive that it escapes reflection. At the close of his career, when he wrote, in 1861, to the managers of the Royal Institution resigning most of his duties, he expressed this feeling very beautifully, and at the same time so simply and clearly as to make his letter of resignation a precious bit of literature.

"I entered the Royal Institution in March, 1813, nearly forty-nine years ago, and, with the exception of a comparatively short period, during which I was abroad on the continent with Sir H. Davy, I have been with you ever since. During that time I have been most happy in your kindness, and in the fostering care which the Royal Institution has bestowed upon me. Thank God, first, for all His gifts! I have next to thank you and your predecessors for the unswerving encouragement and support which you have given me during that period. My life has been a happy one, and all I desired. During its progress, I have tried to make a fitting return for it to the Royal Institution, and through it to science. But the progress of years (now amounting in number to three-score and ten) having brought forth, first, the period of development, and then that of maturity, has ultimately produced for me that of gentle decay. This has taken place in such a manner as to make the evening of life a blessing; for, while increasing physical weakness occurs, a full share of health, free from pain, is granted with it; and while memory and certain other faculties of the mind diminish, my good spirits and cheerfulness do not diminish with them."

For nearly five years after he had given up to a great degree his work at the Royal Institution, he faced death, not with the equanimity of the stoic, but with the peaceful happiness of the believer in Providence and a hereafter. Even the loss of his memory, dear as it must have been to a man who had spent all his life in storing it with the great facts of science, does not seem seriously to have disturbed him. He realized the necessity for patience, and took the lesson of its necessity to heart, so that there was no difficulty in it. Once when calling on his friend, the distinguished scientist, Barlow, who had for a lifetime almost worked beside him at the Royal Institution, but who was now suffering from paralysis, he said: "Barlow, you and I are waiting; that is what we have to do now; and we must try to do it patiently." When the full realization that his powers were leaving him first came to him, he wrote to his niece what he thought ought to be the feelings of the believer in Providence toward death, and his letter shows how thoroughly he had imbibed the great lessons of Christianity, and how much of consolation his faith was to him in this darkest hour before the dawn of that other life, in which he had as implicit confidence as in any of the great scientific principles that he had demonstrated by experiment. He wrote:

"I cannot think that death has, to the Christian, anything in it that should make it a rare, or other than a constant thought. Out of the thought of death comes the view of the life beyond the grave, as out of the view of sin (that true and real view which the Holy Spirit alone can give to man) comes the glorious Hope.... My worldly faculties are slipping away day by day. Happy is it for all of us, that the true good lies not in them. As they ebb, may they leave us as little children, trusting in the Father of Mercies and accepting His unspeakable gift." And when the dark shadow was creeping over him, he wrote to the Comte de Paris: "I bow before Him who is the Lord of all, and hope to be kept waiting patiently for His time and mode of releasing me, according to His divine word and the great and precious promises whereby His people are made partakers of the divine nature."

Probably the feature of the careers of Darwin and Spencer which are saddest for their adherents, and which made those who refused to be recognized as among their followers appreciate their one-sidedness, is the confession by both of them, that they had lost their interest in poetry and even in literature of all kinds, and toward the end of their lives particularly lost entirely their appreciation of things artistic. As might be expected from what we know of Faraday, this was not at all the case with him; but, on the contrary, down to the end of his life, he retained all his youthful admiration for the poets. His niece tells the story of hearing him often read poetry, and of how much he used to be affected by his favorite poems. In one of her letters she says:

"But of all things, I used to like to hear him read 'Childe Harold'; and never shall I forget the way in which he read the description of the storm on Lake Leman. He took great pleasure in Bryon, and Coleridge's 'Hymn to Mont Blanc' delighted him. When anything touched his feelings as he read—and it happened not infrequently—he would show it not only in his voice, but by tears in his eyes also."

As a young man, he was so completely taken up with the scientific studies that he could not think that he would ever find time for the ordinary interests of life. Especially was this true with regard to the question of marriage. He felt that he would never marry, and he seems rather to have pitied those, the weakness of whose nature pushed them on to assume many duties in life and look for merely selfish happiness. It was as a very young man that he wrote:

When the time came, however, he altered this opinion. Among the elders of the Church which he attended in London was a Mr. Barnard, a silversmith. Faraday occasionally spent an evening at his house, and incidentally met his daughter Sarah. He had not met her many times before his ideas as to what love might mean in life were completely changed, and not long after making her acquaintance he wrote her a letter, in which he recants and asks her to be more than a friend. His letter is rather interesting as love letters go.

"You know me as well or better than I do myself. You know my former prejudices and my present thoughts; you know my weaknesses, my vanity, my whole mind; you have converted me from one erroneous way; let me hope that you will attempt to correct what others are wrong.... Again and again I attempt to say what I feel, but I cannot. Let me, however, claim not to be the selfish being that wishes to bend his affections for his own sake only. In whatever way I can best minister to your happiness, either by assiduity or by absence, it shall be done. Do not injure me by withdrawing your friendship, or punish me for aiming to be more than a friend by making me less; and if you cannot grant me more, leave me what I possess but hear me."

In spite of the sincere feeling of this letter, the lady hesitated. For a time she left London, apparently in order to give herself a breathing spell from the ardor of his suit. In spite of his deep interest in science, Faraday followed her to the seacoast, and after they had wandered together for several days at Margate and Dover, where Shakespeare's Cliff Was an especial haunt of theirs, the lady relented. Faraday returned to London bubbling over with happiness. He was not quite thirty when they were married, and at the time his salary did not amount to more than a thousand dollars a year. It was distinctly not a marriage of reason.

Most of the happiness of his life came to him from his marriage. Many years afterward, he called it "An event which, more than any other, contributed to my happiness and healthful state of mind." With years, this feeling only deepened and strengthened. In the midst of his scientific triumphs, his first thought was always of her. When his attendance at scientific congresses took him away from her, his letters were frequent, and always expressive of his longing to be with her. One of his biographers has said "that doubtless at any time between their marriage and his final illness, he might have written to her as he did from Birmingham, at the time of the meeting of the British Association there."

"After all, there is no pleasure like the tranquil pleasure of home; and here, the moment I leave the table, I wish I were with you in quiet. Oh! what happiness is ours! My runs into the world in this way only serve to make me esteem that happiness the more."

Faraday had probably lost more illusions than most men, and came to the true appreciation of things as they are. In spite of his life-long study, he had no illusions with regard to the education of the intellect merely, or the possession of superior intellectual faculties as moral factors. His keen observation of men had made any such mistake as that impossible. On the other hand, he had often noted that the ignorant, or at least those lacking education, were very admirable in conduct and in principle, and so we have his suggestive testimony:

"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 honorable 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."

Faraday's very definite expression of what he considers must be the position of the man of science with regard to a hereafter and the existence of God, is worth while recalling here, because it was such a modest yet forceful presentation of the attitude of mind that every thinking modern scientist must occupy in this matter, the attitude which all of Faraday's great fellow-workers in the domain of electricity also occupy. It is indeed the position that has been assumed by all the great scientists who bowed humbly to faith, though so many lesser lights have found this apparently impossible. At a lecture given in 1854 at the Royal Institution, Faraday said: "High as man is placed above the creatures around him, there is a higher and far more exalted position within his view; and the ways are infinite in which he occupies his thoughts about the fears, or hopes, or expectations of a future life. I believe that the truth of that future cannot be brought to his knowledge by any exertion of his mental powers, however exalted they may be; that it is made known to him by other teaching than his own, and is received through simple belief of the testimony given.... Yet even in earthly matters, I believe that 'the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and godhead'; and I have never seen anything incompatible between those things of man which can be known by the spirit of man which is within him, and those higher things concerning his future which he cannot know by that spirit."

Elsewhere he had said: "When I consider the multitude of associate 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!"

Dr. Gladstone, in his Life of Faraday, which we have so often put into requisition, has given in one striking paragraph a description of the passing of Faraday, that in its simplicity is worthy of the great man whom it so well represents. It is so different from what is ordinarily supposed to be the attitude of the scientist towards death, that when by contrast we recall that Faraday is acknowledged to be the greatest experimental scientist of the nineteenth century, the man of his generation most honored by scientific societies at home and abroad—his honorary memberships numbered nearly one hundred—it must be considered as a very curious contradiction of what is the usual impression in this matter: "When his faculties were fading fast, he would sit long at the western window, watching the glories of the sunset; and one day, when his wife drew his attention to a beautiful rainbow that then spanned the sky, he looked beyond the falling shower and the many-colored arch and observed, 'He hath set His testimony in the heavens.' On August 25th, 1867, quietly, almost imperceptibly, came the release. There was a philosopher less on earth, and a saint more in heaven."

When we come to the end of the life of this greatest of experimentalists, the most striking remembrance is that of the supreme original genius of this great discoverer in electricity, whose work was such a stimulus to others, whose conclusions were to prove the basis for so much of the work of his contemporaries and his successors in electrical investigation, and whose place in the world of science is assured beside such men as Newton and Kepler and Harvey and the other great pioneers in science. There is no doubt at all, however, that our heartiest feelings are aroused by the picture of the wonderfully rounded existence of the great scientist, his pervasive humanity, his largeness of soul and sympathy, his understanding of men in their ways through his own complete knowledge of himself, that is so strikingly displayed. We feel sure that Faraday himself would have cared less for his fame as a great scientist than for the summary of his life which has been given us by his friend, Bence Jones, who said: "His was a life-long strife, to seek and say that which he thought was true and to do that which he thought was kind."