Makers of Electricity

by Brother Potamian; James J. Walsh

No one knew better than Maxwell, that his speculations on matter and electricity were theories, and that what he was offering to science were not definite explanations, but possible hypotheses. He has emphasized this himself over and over again. This inability of the human intellect at the present moment to solve all the questions that its inquiring spirit can evoke, did not keep him from investigating and following up his investigations by mathematical deductions and mechanical suggestions just as far as possible. He had the same attitude of mind toward the great problems of man's relation to his fellow-man, to the universe, and to a hereafter. While he felt that he could not solve the problems entirely, he felt also that his reasoning was quite sufficient to enable him to get a little nearer to the heart mystery of them and to understand something of their significance. In his later years, the question of the existence of pain and suffering in the world had, because of Darwin's attitude towards them and his declaration that since he was unable to understand them they carried him away from the thought of a beneficent Creator, attracted much attention. We have an essay of Clerk Maxwell's, then, on "Aspects of Pain," in which he discusses particularly pain as discipline. It is, of course, the old story, that men rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves, and that the successive deaths of self represent a triumphant progress, but it comes with a new vigor from this great scientist. We all know that it is the man who has suffered who is able to do things, and we are all well aware that the man who has lived in comfort all his life is almost sure to be lacking in character when a great crisis comes upon him. Indeed, as Clerk Maxwell re-states it, this is such a commonplace that one wonders why the problem of pain should have seemed so hard to understand.

There is an essay of his, also, on "Science and Free Will," which seems to deserve special notice. He has no illusions with regard to determinism. He is perfectly sure that he is free and that the great majority of men around him do or do not things as they choose. He points out that science makes for determinism only if one takes a very narrow view of it. Free will is not only compatible with scientific thinking, but it represents what would be expected as a culmination of the significance of life. In a word, Clerk Maxwell wrote as suggestively with regard to the great problems of human life as with regard to the physical nature around him that claimed so much of his interest. He was a true natural philosopher, and his interests were not limited merely to the lower orders of beings.

Because of the supreme power of Clerk Maxwell's mind to seek out the very heart of difficulties, the conclusions which he reached with regard to the existence of matter and the causes for the ultimate qualities which it exhibits, have an enduring interest. Mathematics is sometimes said to lead minds into scepticism. Cardinal Newman even thought that the mathematical cast of mind was the farthest removed from that which might be expected to accept things confidently on faith. Clerk Maxwell's intellect was eminently mathematical; yet, far from sending him over into the camp of the agnostics, his tendency to get at the ultimate reasons for things seemed almost to push him to conclusions with regard to the origin of matter, and especially its ultimate constituents, not ordinarily supposed to be scientific. A passage like the following, for instance, which may be found in his book on "The Theory of Heat," London, 1872, page 312, brings out this tendency very well:

"But if we suppose the molecules to be made at all, or if we suppose them to consist of something previously made, why should we expect any irregularity to exist among them? If they are, as we believe, the only material things which still remain in the precise condition in which they first began to exist, why should we not rather look for some indication of that spirit of order, our scientific confidence in which is never shaken by the difficulty which we experience in tracing it in the complex arrangements of visible things, and of which our moral estimation is shown in all our attempts to think and speak the truth, and to ascertain the exact principles of distributive justice?"

The argument from design for creation is often said in our day to have lost its weight. For Clerk Maxwell, however, this was evidently not the case. On the contrary, he seemed to find in the detailed knowledge of the ultimate constituents of matter which had come in recent years, additional proofs of the great design which permeates nature. He had come to the conclusion that not only were the groups of atoms which make up living things so ordered as to produce definite results, because there was a great purpose and, above all, a great Designer behind nature, but he also reached the position that the separate atoms of matter were so ordered with regard to one another, and in that ordering were so closely related to corresponding qualities in higher beings, that only the presence of a great design in nature could possibly account for all these wonderful attributes, which were to be found even in the smallest portions of matter. He said in his article on the atom, in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"What I thought of was not so much that uniformity of result which is due to uniformity in the process of formation, as a uniformity intended and accomplished by the same wisdom and power of which uniformity, accuracy, symmetry, consistency, and continuity of plan are as important attributes as the contrivance of the special utility of each individual thing."

Here is the old argument for the existence of God, from the design exhibited in the universe, rehabilitated by its application to the minutest portions of matter, whose qualities demand such an explanation quite as much as the highest adaptations of nature.

Perhaps the most striking expression of all with regard to the atoms that Clerk Maxwell permitted himself, is that in which he finds the type of what is best in man, in every minute portion of the universe, planted there by the Creator just as surely as they are in His highest beings, because they represent the most precious qualities of His own nature as they are reflected in the creation that He called into existence.

"They (the atoms) continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations, after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him Who in the beginning created not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist."

A very interesting side of Maxwell's life is that which shows his continued interest in literature, and even his occasional dippings into poetry. Though he reached distinction in mathematics and physics so early in his career, he yet found time to indulge a liking for the classics, and we even find some rather good translations of Horace's odes from his pen. The translation of a part of the Ajax of Sophocles from the Greek is a striking testimony to the breadth of Maxwell's intellectual interests. All during life, however, he permitted himself occasionally the luxury of fitting words into verse forms, and sometimes with a success that deserves much more than passing interest. It is very probable that the following verses, for instance, which are the first and last stanzas of a poem on the formula for being happy in life and were meant to be sung (or at least so he would hint) to the tune of "Il segreto per esser felice," will strike many a sympathetic chord in the modern time.