For the same reason also he declined most of the positions of honour which he was invited to fill, believing that they would encroach too much on his time, though he willingly accepted the honorary degrees and scientific distinctions that were showered upon him.[25]
And among those who follow Science lovingly, there are two very distinct bands: there are the philosophers, the discoverers, men who persistently ask questions of Nature; and there are the practical men, who apply her answers to the various purposes of human life. Many noble names are inscribed in either bead-roll, but few are able to take rank in both services: indeed, the question of practical utility would terribly cramp the investigator, while the enjoyment of patient research in unexplored regions of knowledge is usually too ethereal for those who seek their pleasures in useful inventions. The mental configuration is different in the two cases; each may claim and receive his due award of honour.
Faraday was pre-eminently a discoverer; he liked the name of "philosopher." His favourite paths of study seem to wander far enough from the common abodes of human thought or the requirements of ordinary life. He became familiar, as no other man ever was, with the varied forces of magnetism and electricity, heat and light, gravitation and galvanism, chemical affinity and mechanical motion; but he did not seek to "harness the lightnings," or to chain those giants and to make them grind like Samson in the prison-house. His way of treating them reminds us rather of the old fable of Proteus, who would transform himself into a whirlwind or a dragon, a flame of fire or a rushing stream, in order to elude his pursuer; but if the wary inquirer could catch him asleep in his cave, he might be constrained to utter all his secret knowledge: for the favourite thought of Faraday seems to have been that these various forces were the changing forms of a Proteus, and his great desire seems to have been to learn the secret of their origin and their transformations. Thus he loved to break down the walls of separation between different classes of phenomena, and his eye doubtless sparkled with delight when he saw what had always been looked upon as permanent gases liquefy like common vapours under the constraint of pressure and cold—when the wires that coiled round his magnets gave signs of an electric wave, or coruscated with sparks—when the electricities derived from the friction machine and from the voltaic pile yielded him the same series of phenomena—when he recognized the cumulative proof that the quantity of electricity in a galvanic battery is exactly proportional to the chemical action—when his electro-static theory seemed to break down the barrier between the conductors and insulators, and many other barriers beside—when he sent a ray of polarized light through a piece of heavy glass between the poles of an electro-magnet, and on making contact saw that the plane of polarization was rotated, or, as he said, the light was magnetized—and when he watched pieces of bismuth, or crystals of Iceland spar, or bubbles of oxygen, ranging themselves in a definite position in the magnetic field.
"I delight in hearing of exact numbers, and the determinations of the equivalents of force when different forms of force are compared one with another," he wrote to Joule in 1845; and no wonder, for these quantitative comparisons have proved many of his speculations to be true, and have made them the creed of the scientific world. When he began to investigate the different sciences, they might be compared to so many different countries with impassable frontiers, different languages and laws, and various weights and measures; but when he ceased they resembled rather a brotherhood of states, linked together by a community of interests and of speech, and a federal code; and in bringing about this unification no one had so great a share as himself.
He loved to speculate, too, on Matter and Force, on the nature of atoms and of imponderable agents. "It is these things," says the great German physicist Professor Helmholz, "that Faraday, in his mature works, ever seeks to purify more and more from everything that is theoretical, and is not the direct and simple expression of the fact. For instance, he contended against the action of forces at a distance, and the adoption of two electrical and two magnetic fluids, as well as all hypotheses contrary to the law of the conservation of force, which he early foresaw, though he misunderstood it in its scientific expression. And it is just in this direction that he exercised the most unmistakeable influence first of all on the English physicists."[26]
While, however, Faraday was pre-eminently an experimental philosopher, he was far from being indifferent to the useful applications of science. His own connection with the practical side of the question was threefold: he undertook some laborious investigations of this nature himself; he was frequently called upon, especially by the Trinity House, to give his opinions on the inventions of others; and he was fond of bringing useful inventions before the members of the Royal Institution in his Friday evening discourses. The first of these, on February 3, 1826, was on India-rubber, and was illustrated by an abundance of specimens both in the raw and manufactured states. He traced the history of the substance, from the crude uncoagulated sap to the sheet rubber and waterproof fabrics which Mr. Hancock and Mr. Macintosh had recently succeeded in preparing. In this way also he continued to throw the magic of his genius around Morden's machinery for manufacturing Bramah's locks, Ericsson's caloric engine, Brunel's block machinery at Portsmouth, Petitjean's process for silvering mirrors, the prevention of dry-rot in timber, De la Rue's envelope machinery, artificial rubies, Bonelli's electric silk loom, Barry's mode of ventilating the House of Lords, and many kindred subjects.
It may not be amiss to describe the last of his Friday evenings, in which he brought before the public Mr. C. W. Siemens' Regenerative Gas Furnace. The following letter to the inventor will tell the first steps:—
"Royal Institution, March 22, 1862.
"My dear Sir,
"I have just returned from Birmingham—and there saw at Chance's works the application of your furnaces to glass-making. I was very much struck with the whole matter.
"As our managers want me to end the F. evenings here after Easter, I have looked about for a thought, for I have none in myself. I think I should like to speak of the effects I saw at Chance's, if you do not object. If you assent, can you help me with any drawings or models, or illustrations either in the way of thoughts or experiments? Do not say much about it out of doors as yet, for my mind is not settled in what way (if you assent) I shall present the subject.
"Ever truly yours,
"M. Faraday.
"C. W. Siemens, Esq."
Of course the permission was gladly given, and Mr. Siemens met him at Birmingham, and for two days conducted him about works for flint and crown glass, or for enamel, as well as about ironworks, in which his principle was adopted, wondering at the Professor's simplicity of character as well as at his ready power of grasping the whole idea. Then came the Friday evening, 20th June, 1862, in which he explained the great saving of heat effected, and pictured the world of flame into which he had gazed in some of those furnaces. But his powers of lecturing were enfeebled, and during the course of the hour he burnt his notes by accident, and at the conclusion he very pathetically bade his audience farewell, telling them that he felt he had been before them too long, and that the experience of that evening showed he was now useless as their public servant, but he would still endeavour to do what he could privately for the Institution. The usual abstract of the lecture appeared, but not from his unaided pen.