"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."
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Some of the books bound by Faraday at this time are still preserved in the library of the Royal Institution, together with his notes on various courses of lectures, some of which are mentioned more particularly later on in this sketch, as they were also bound by him. Among the manuscripts in the collection are letters from many of the important scientific scientists of Europe.
[30] Makers of Modern Medicine, Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1907.