In concluding this section it may be well to string together a few gems from Faraday's lectures or correspondence, though they are greatly damaged by being torn away from their original setting:—
"After all, though your science is much to me, we are not friends for science sake only, but for something better in a man, something more important in his nature, affection, kindness, good feeling, moral worth; and so, in remembrance of these, I now write to place myself in your presence, and in thought shake hands, tongues, and hearts together." This was addressed to Schönbein.
"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 honourable 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."
"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 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."
"Man is an improving animal. Unlike the animated world around him, which remains in the same constant state, he is continually varying; and it is one of the noblest prerogatives of his nature, that in the highest of earthly distinctions he has the power of raising and exalting himself continually. The transitory state of man has been held up to him as a memento of his weakness: to man degraded it may be so with justice; to man as he ought to be it is no reproach; and in knowledge, that man only is to be contemned and despised who is not in a state of transition."
"It is not the duty or place of a philosopher to dictate belief, and all hypothesis is more or less matter of belief; he has but to give his facts and his conclusions, and so much of the logic which connects the former with the latter as he may think necessary, and then to commit the whole to the scientific world for present, and, as he may sometimes without presumption believe, for future judgment."
SECTION IV.
HIS METHOD OF WORKING.
It is on record that when a young aspirant asked Faraday the secret of his success as a scientific investigator, he replied, "The secret is comprised in three words—Work, Finish, Publish."