Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it."
Faraday, who happened not to be familiar with the passage, made his friend repeat it over and over again as he drank in the whole meaning of the poetry, for there is a true sense in which no other mortal had ever opened his ears so fully to the harmony of the universe.
From the plains of mental mediocrity there occasionally rise the mountains of genius, and from the dead level of selfish respectability there stand out now and then the peaks of moral greatness. Neither kind of excellence is so common as we could wish it, and it is a rare coincidence when, as in Socrates, the two meet in the same individual. In Faraday we have a modern instance. There are persons now living who watched this man of strong will and intense feelings raising himself from the lower ranks of society, yet without losing his balance; rather growing in simplicity, disinterestedness, and humility, as princes became his correspondents and all the learned bodies of the world vied with each other to do him homage; still finding his greatest happiness at home, though reigning in the affections of all his fellows,—loving every honest man, however divergent in opinion, and loved most by those who knew him best.
This is the phenomenon. By what theory is it to be accounted for?
The secret did not lie in the nature of his pursuits. This cannot be better shown than in the following incident furnished me by Mrs. Crosse:—"One morning, a few months after we were married, my husband took me to the Royal Institution to call on Mr. and Mrs. Faraday. I had not seen the laboratory there, and the philosopher very kindly took us over the Institution, explaining for my information many objects of interest. His great vivacity and cheeriness of manner surprised me in a man who devoted his life to such abstruse studies, but I have since learnt to know that the highest philosophical nature is often, indeed generally, united with an almost childlike simplicity.
"After viewing the ample appliances for experimental research, and feeling impressed by the scientific atmosphere of the place, I turned and said, 'Mr. Faraday, you must be very happy in your position and with your pursuits, which elevate you entirely out of the meaner aspects and lower aims of common life.'
"He shook his head, and with that wonderful mobility of countenance which was characteristic, his expression of joyousness changed to one of profound sadness, he replied: 'When I quitted business, and took to science as a career, I thought I had left behind me all the petty meannesses and small jealousies which hinder man in his moral progress; but I found myself raised into another sphere, only to find poor human nature just the same everywhere—subject to the same weaknesses and the same self-seeking, however exalted the intellect.'