He was evidently much impressed by my careful analysis of his “Summary and Conclusions” and of its effect upon the minds of American and English scientists. Seeing that he enjoyed informal conversation and encouraged it, I told him of my Alpine experiences in Switzerland and of the anxiety I caused to my English acquaintance because I was far from being “too deliberate and too cautious.” “Well,” said he, “I might have suspected an Irish ancestry if I had met you in Switzerland twenty months ago. But you have changed wonderfully since that time, and if you keep it up the goose that came to Cambridge may be quite a swan when it departs from Cambridge.”
I informed Tyndall that Maxwell’s glowing account of Helmholtz, which I had seen in Campbell’s life of Maxwell, and in Nature, to which he had referred me, had decided me to migrate from Cambridge to Berlin and take up the study of experimental physics in Helmholtz’s famous laboratory. He looked pleased, and referring good-naturedly to my goose simile again, he said jokingly: “You are no longer a goose in a fog. Let Helmholtz decide whether you are a swan or not.” Then, growing more serious, he added: “You will find in the Berlin laboratory the very things which my American and British friends and I should like to see in operation in all college and university laboratories in America and in the British Empire. In this respect the Germans have been leading the world for over forty years, and they have been splendid leaders.” This, then, was the reason, I thought, why, twelve years before, Tyndall said to his New York friends: “I propose ... to devote every cent of the money which you have so generously poured in upon me to the education of young American philosophers in Germany.”
I ventured to address to the very informal Tyndall the following informal question: “Since in your opinion I am no longer a goose in a fog, you will have no objection if I apply to the Columbia authorities to send me as their ‘young American philosopher,’ as their first Tyndall fellow, to Berlin, will you?” “No, my friend,” said he, “I have already urged you to do so. Remember, however, that a Tyndall fellow must never permit himself to wander like a goose in a fog, but must strive to carry his head high up like a swan, his body floating upon the clear waters of stored-up human knowledge, and his vision, mounted on high, searching for new communications with the spirit of eternal truth, as your mother expressed it so well.” He liked my mother’s expressions, “temple consecrated to the eternal truth,” and “the icons of the great saints of science.”
I will add here that Tyndall’s mental attitude toward science appeared to me to be the same as my mother’s mental attitude toward religion. God was the great spiritual background of her religion, and the works of the prophets and of the saints were, according to her faith, the only sources from which the human mind can draw the light which will illuminate this great spiritual background. Hence, as I said before, her fondness for and her remarkable knowledge of the words of the prophets and the lives of saints. The “eternal truth” was, according to my understanding at that time, the sacred background of Tyndall’s scientific faith, and the works of the great scientific discoverers, their lives, and their methods of inquiry into physical phenomena were the only sources from which the human mind can draw the light which will illuminate that sacred background. He nourished that faith with a religious devotion, and his appeals in the name of that faith were irresistible. His friends in America and in England, who were glad to have him as their advocate of the cause of scientific research, had the same faith that he had, and they nourished it with the same religious devotion. I know to-day, and I suspected it at that time, that this faith was kindled and kept alive in the hearts of those men both here and in the British Empire by the light of the life and of the wonderful discoveries of Michael Faraday, and by the prophetic vision which led this great scientist to his discoveries. He was their contemporary and his achievements, like a great search-light, showed them the true path of scientific progress.
My last visit to Tyndall took place toward the end of the last, that is, the Easter, term, and when I returned to Cambridge I informed my friends that at the end of the term I would migrate to Berlin. It was not necessary for me to assure them how badly I felt to leave what they often heard me call “the saints and the sacred precincts of Cambridge”; they knew of my reverence for the place and they also knew my reasons for that reverence. They understood my reverent devotion to the memory of Newton, but they did not quite understand my similar devotion to the memory of Maxwell. How could they? None of his classics were necessary in order to solve the problems usually served before the candidates for the mathematical tripos honors. Neither could they understand my admiration for La Grange, who, in their opinion, was only an imperfect interpreter of Newton. Helmholtz they appreciated more, but the exalted opinion which Maxwell had of Helmholtz had not yet penetrated among my mathematical chums at Cambridge. They were sorry to lose me, they said, but they did not envy me, because they did not see that Berlin had anything which Cambridge did not have. This never was the opinion of Maxwell and it was not at that time the opinion of Tyndall.
Tyndall was the only physicist that I had ever met who had known Faraday personally. He was Faraday’s co-worker in the Royal Institution for many years, and to him and Maxwell I owe my earliest knowledge of Faraday’s wonderful personality. Tyndall conducted me into that knowledge by word of mouth, and his conversation about Faraday’s personality and scientific temperament thrilled me. I told him that I had bought in a Cambridge second-hand book-shop three volumes of Faraday’s “Electrical Researches” for three shillings, and Tyndall remarked: “Faraday is still quite cheap at Cambridge.” Then, after some meditation, he added: “Read them; their story is just as new and as stirring to-day as it was when these volumes were first printed. They will help you much to interpret Maxwell.” He presented me with a copy of his story, “Faraday as a Discoverer,” which closes with the words:
“Just and faithful knight of God.”
In this book Tyndall drew the same picture of Faraday which Campbell had given me of Maxwell. One can imagine what it meant to the world to bring these two spiritual and intellectual giants into personal contact during the period of 1860–1865, when Maxwell was professor at King’s College, London, and Faraday was at the Royal Institution, where he had been for nearly sixty years. It was significant that at the close of that period, that is, in January, 1865, Maxwell, in a letter to an intimate friend, said this:
“I have a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.”
A very strong claim made by the most modest of men! The paper was presented during that year to the Royal Society and was “great guns.” It marks, like Newton’s discovery of the law of gravitation and his formulation of the laws of dynamics, a new epoch in science. In Maxwell I saw a Newton of the electrical science, but I confess that in those days nothing more substantial than my youthful enthusiasm justified me in that opinion. I was aware that my knowledge of Faraday’s discoveries and of Maxwell’s interpretation of them was quite hazy, and I made up my mind to get more light before I started out for Berlin.