Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

by Silvanus P. Thompson

IMPRESSIONS OF LIEBIG.

In 1844 he was well enough to attend the British Association meeting at York. Liebig, who had also been there, wrote to him three months later with some reminiscences. What had struck him most was the tendency in England to ignore the more purely scientific works and to value only those with a “practical” bearing. “In Germany it is quite the contrary. Here, in the eyes of scientific men, no value, or at least but a trifling one, is placed on the practical results. The enrichment of science is alone considered worthy of attention.” Liebig further expressed himself dissatisfied with the meeting at York. He had been interested to make the acquaintance of so many celebrated men, but it was, strictly, “a feast given to the geologists, the other sciences serving only to decorate the table.” Then came a more personal note:—

Often do my thoughts wander back to the period which I spent in England, among the many pleasant hours of which the remembrance of those passed with you and your amiable wife is to me always the dearest and most agreeable. With the purest pleasure I bring to mind my walk with her, in the botanical garden at York, when I was afforded a glance of the richness of her mind; what a rare treasure you possess in her! The breakfast in the little house with Snow Harris, and Graham, and our being together at Bishopthorpe, are still fresh in my memory.

If Liebig was disposed to underrate the useful applications of science, Faraday certainly was not. Though his own research work was carried on with the single aim of scientific progress; though he himself never swerved aside into any branch research that might have yielded money; yet he was ever ready to examine, and even to lecture upon, the inventions of others. He accepted for the subjects of his Friday night discourses all sorts of topics—artificial stone, machinery for pen-making, lithography, Ruhmkorff’s induction coil, a process for silvering mirrors, and lighthouse illumination by electric light. His very last lecture was on Siemens’s gas-furnaces. He could be just as enthusiastic over the invention of another as over some discovery of his own. With respect to his lecture on the Ruhmkorff coil, Tyndall describes him in a passage which is interesting, as containing an epithet since adopted for another great man for whom Tyndall had less respect than for Faraday:—

I well remember the ecstasy and surprise of the grand old man, evoked by effects which we should now deem utterly insignificant.

Bence Jones says:—

When he brought the discoveries of others before his hearers, one object, and one alone, seemed to determine all he said and did, and that was, “without commendation and without censure,” to do the utmost that could be done for the discoverer.

In so perfect a character it would be marvellous if there were not some flaw. His persistent ignoring of Sturgeon, and his attribution of the invention of the electromagnet to Moll and Henry, whose work was frankly based on Sturgeon’s, is simply inexplicable. He failed to appreciate the greatness of Dalton, and thought him an overrated man.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

Amid all his overflowing kindliness of heart, Faraday preserved other less obvious traits of character. Any act of injustice or meanness called forth an almost volcanic burst of indignation. Hot flashes of temper, fierce moments of wrath were by no means unknown. But he exercised a most admirable self-control, and a habitual discipline of soul that kept his temper under. Grim and forbidding, and even exacting he could show himself to an idle or unfaithful servant. There were those who feared as well as those who loved and admired him. Dr. Gladstone says of him that he was no “model of all the virtues,” dreadfully uninteresting, and discouraging to those who feel calm perfection out of their reach. “His inner life was a battle, with its wounds as well as its victory.” “It is true also,” he adds, “that with his great caution and his repugnance to moral evil, he was more disposed to turn away in disgust from an erring companion than to endeavour to reclaim him.”