Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

by Silvanus P. Thompson

Probably few men have ever been recipients of so many scientific honours as Faraday. Beginning in the year 1823 with his election as a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences of Paris, and as an honorary member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the list of his diplomas and distinctions—some ninety-seven in number—ended in 1864 with his election as Associate of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Naples. It included honours from almost every academy and university of Europe. These honours Faraday valued very highly; and whilst he consigned his various gold medals to a mere wooden box, his diplomas were kept with the utmost care in a special diploma book, in which they were mounted and indexed. To Mr. Spring Rice, who in 1838 asked him for a list of his titles, he replied, enclosing the list, and adding this remark: “One title, namely that of F.R.S., was sought and paid for; all the rest are spontaneous offerings of kindness and goodwill from the bodies named.” Years afterwards he was asked by Lord Wrottesley to advise the Government as to how the position of science or of the cultivators of science in England might be improved. The letter is so characteristic that it cannot be spared:—

Royal Institution: March 10, 1854.

My Lord,—I feel unfit to give a deliberate opinion on the course it might be advisable for the Government to pursue if it were anxious to improve the position of science and its cultivators in our country. My course of life, and the circumstances which make it a happy one for me, are not those of persons who conform to the usages and habits of society. Through the kindness of all, from my Sovereign downwards, I have that which supplies all my need; and in respect of honours, I have, as a scientific man, received from foreign countries and sovereigns those which, belonging to very limited and select classes, surpass in my opinion anything that it is in the power of my own to bestow.

I cannot say that I have not valued such distinctions; on the contrary, I esteem them very highly, but I do not think I have ever worked for or sought after them. Even were such to be now created here, the time is past when these would possess any attraction for me....

Without thinking of the effect it might have upon distinguished men of science, or upon the minds of those who, stimulated to exertion, might become distinguished, I do think that a government should, for its own sake, honour the men who do honour and service to the country. I refer now to honours only, not to beneficial rewards. Of such honours, I think, there are none. Knighthoods and baronetcies are sometimes conferred with such intentions, but I think them utterly unfit for that purpose. Instead of conferring distinction, they confound the man who is one of twenty, or perhaps fifty, with hundreds of others. They depress rather than exalt him, for they tend to lower the especial distinction of mind to the commonplace of society. An intelligent country ought to recognise the scientific men amongst its people as a class. If honours are conferred upon eminence in any class, as that of the law or the army, they should be in this also. The aristocracy of the class should have other distinctions than those of lowly and high-born, rich and poor, yet they should be such as to be worthy of those whom the sovereign and the country should delight to honour; and, being rendered very desirable, and even enviable, in the eyes of the aristocracy by birth, should be unattainable except to that of science. Thus much, I think, the Government and the country ought to do, for their own sake and the good of science, more than for the sake of the men who might be thought worthy of such distinction. The latter have attained to their fit place, whether the community at large recognise it or not....

I have the honour to be, my lord, your very faithful servant,

M. Faraday.

HOW SCIENCE CAN BE HONOURED.

To Professor Andrews he wrote in 1843 in a similar strain:—

I have always felt that there is something degrading in offering rewards for intellectual exertion, and that societies or academies, or even kings and emperors, should mingle in the matter does not remove the degradation, for the feeling which is hurt is a point above their condition, and belongs to the respect which a man owes to himself.... Still, I think rewards and honours good if properly distributed; but they should be given for what a man has done, and not offered for what he is to do.