Fig. 21.
Many such simple models were used in his lectures. He leaned upon them to aid his defective memory; but they helped his audience quite as much as they aided him. Reference was made on [p. 7] to his use of cards, on which to jot down notes of thoughts that occurred to him. One such runs as follows:—
Remember to do one thing at once.
Also to finish a thing.
Also to do a little if I could not do much.
Pique about mathematics in chemists, and resolution to support the character of experiment—as better for the mass. Hence origin of the title Exp. researches.
Influence of authority. Davy and difficulty of steering between self-sufficiency and dependance (sic) on others.
Aim at high things, but not presumptuously.
Endeavour to succeed—expect not to succeed.
Criticise one’s own view in every way by experiment—if possible, leave no objection to be put by others.
Faraday’s enthusiasm about experimental researches was at times unrestrained, and always contagious. Dumas describes how Faraday repeated for him the experimental demonstration of the action of magnetism on light. Having come to the final experiment, Faraday rubbed his hands excitedly, while his eyes lit up with fire, and his animated countenance told the passionate feelings which he brought to the discovery of scientific truth. On another occasion Plücker, of Bonn, then on a visit to London, showed Faraday in his own laboratory the action of a magnet upon the luminous electric discharge in vacuum tubes. “Faraday danced round them; and as he saw the moving arches of light, he cried: ‘Oh, to live always in it!’” Once a friend met him at Eastbourne in the midst of a tremendous storm, rubbing his hands together gleefully because he had been fortunate enough to see the lightning strike the church tower. To the Baroness Burdett-Coutts he once wrote inviting her to see some experiments upon spectrum analysis in his private room. The experiments, he wrote, will not be beautiful except to the intelligent.