Makers of Electricity

by Brother Potamian; James J. Walsh

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."