HATRED OF CONTROVERSY.
During the years when he was examining the apparatus of rival inventors for lighthouse illumination, he could calmly hear them described as Mr. So-and-So’s electric lights, all the while knowing that it was his own discovery of magneto-electric induction which had made the mechanical production of electric light possible. Yet he fired up if anyone dared to revive the priority dispute between Davy and Stephenson as to the invention of the safety lamp. “Disgraceful subject,” was his own comment. In his dispute with Snow Harris as to the design of lightning rods, in which, as it is now known, Snow Harris was right; in his dispute with Airy over the curved lines of force; in his minor difficulties over Hare’s pile and Becquerel’s magnetic observations, none could either assert his own position with more simple dignity, nor admit with greater frankness the rights of his rival.
To Hare he wrote:—
You must excuse me, however, for several reasons from answering it [Hare’s letter] at any length; the first is my distaste for controversy, which is so great that I would on no account our correspondence should acquire that character. I have often seen it do great harm, and yet remember few cases in natural knowledge where it has helped much either to pull down error or advance truth. Criticism, on the other hand, is of much value.
When we reflect how large a part of his experimental researches was devoted to establishing the relations between the various forces of nature, we cannot but think that Faraday must have regarded with somewhat mixed feelings the publication in 1846 of Sir William Grove’s volume on the Correlation of Forces. He had, in June, 1834, given a course of lectures on the mutual relation of chemical and electrical phenomena, and had dealt therein with the conversion of chemical and electrical power into heat, and had speculated on the inclusion of gravitation in these mutual relations. In 1853 Faraday marked the old lecture notes of these lectures with his initials, and endorsed them with the words “Correlation of Physical Forces.” Probably none rejoiced more than he that Grove had undertaken the work of popularising the notion which for a score of years had been familiar to himself. Yet he was keen to resent an unjust reflection, as is shown by his letter to Richard Phillips, republished in Vol. II. of the “Experimental Researches,” p. 229, respecting Dr. John Davy’s Life of Sir Humphry.
Faraday has himself left on record ([p. 10]) that when he wrote to Davy asking to be taken into his employment, his motive was his desire “to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of Science, which, I imagined, made its pursuers amiable and liberal.” Davy had smiled at this boyish notion, and had told him that the experience of a few years would correct his ideas. Years afterwards he spoke of this matter to Mrs. Andrew Crosse in an interview which she has recorded:—
After viewing the ample appliances for experimental research, and feeling much 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, and 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.”
These were his words as well as I can recollect; and, looking at that good and great man, I thought I had never seen a countenance which so impressed me with the characteristic of perfect unworldliness.
HONOURS AND TITLES.