[CHAPTER XIII]

THE SCIENTIST—SIR HUMPHRY DAVY

Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was born in Cornwall, a part of England known for its very mild climate and the combined beauty and majesty of its scenery. On either side of the peninsula the Atlantic in varying mood lies extended in summer sunshine, or from its shroud of mist thunders on the black cliffs and their time-sculptured sandstones. From the coast inland, stretch, between flowered lanes and hedges, rolling pasture-lands of rich green made all the more vivid by the deep reddish tint of the ploughed fields. In Penzance, then a town of about three thousand inhabitants, and in its picturesque vicinity, the early years of Davy's life were passed. Across the bay rose the great vision of the guarded mount (St. Michael's) of which Milton's verse speaks. Farther to the east lay Lizard Head, the southernmost promontory of England, and a few miles to the north St. Ives with its sweep of sandy beach; while not far to the west of Penzance Land's End stood sentry "'Twixt two unbounded seas." The youthful Davy was keenly alive to the charms of his early environment, and his genius was susceptible to the belief in supernatural agencies native to the imaginative Celtic people among whom he was reared. As a precocious child of five he improvised rhymes, and as a youth set forth in excellent verse the glories of Mount's Bay:—

"There did I first rejoice that I was born
Amidst the majesty of azure seas."

Davy received what is usually called a liberal education, putting in nine years in the Penzance and one year in the Truro Grammar School. His best exercises were translations from the classics into English verse. He was rather idle, fond of fishing (an enthusiasm he retained throughout life) and shooting, and less appreciated and beloved by his masters than by his school-fellows, who recognized his wonderful abilities, sought his aid in their Latin compositions (as well as in the writing of letters and valentines), and listened eagerly to his imaginative tales of wonder and horror. Years later he wrote to his mother: "After all, the way in which we are taught Latin and Greek does not much influence the important structure of our minds. I consider it fortunate that I was left much to myself when a child, and put upon no particular plan of study, and that I enjoyed much idleness at Mr. Coryton's school. I perhaps owe to these circumstances the little talents that I have and their peculiar application."

When Davy was about sixteen years old, his father died, leaving the widow and her five children, of whom Humphry was the eldest, with very scanty provision. The mind of the youth seemed to undergo an immediate change. He expressed his resolution (which he nobly carried out) to play his part as son and brother. Within a few weeks he became apprenticed to an apothecary and surgeon, and, having thus found his vocation, drew up his own particular plan of self-education, to which he rigidly adhered. His brother, Dr. John Davy, bears witness that the following is transcribed from a notebook of Humphry's, bearing the date of the same year as his apprenticeship (1795):—

  1. Theology or Religion
  2. -
  3. Taught
  4. by Nature.
  5. Ethics or Moral Virtues
  6. by Revelation.
  7. Geography.
  8. My Profession—
    1. Botany. 2. Pharmacy. 3. Nosology. 4. Anatomy. 5. Surgery. 6. Chemistry.
  9. Logic.
  10. Language, etc.
Theology or Religion - Taught by Nature.
Ethics or Moral Virtues by Revelation.

A series of essays which Davy wrote in pursuing his scheme of self-culture proves how rapidly his mind drew away from the superstitions which characterized the masses of the people among whom he lived. He had as a boy been haunted by the fear of monsters and witches in which the credulous of all classes then believed. His notebook shows that he was now subjecting to examination the religious and political opinions of his time. He composed essays on the immortality and immateriality of the soul, on governments, on the credulity of mortals, on the dependence of the thinking powers on the organization of the body, on the ultimate end of being, on happiness, and on moral obligation. He studied the writings of Locke, Hartley, Berkeley, Hume, Helvetius, Condorcet, and Reid, and knew something of German philosophy. It was not till he was nineteen that Davy entered on the experimental study of chemistry.

Guided by the Elements of Lavoisier, encouraged by the friendship of Gregory Watt (a son of James Watt) and by another gentleman of university education, stimulated by contact with the Cornish mining industry, Davy pursued this new study with zeal, and within a few months had written two essays full of daring generalizations on the physical sciences. These were published early in 1799. Partly on the basis of the ingenious experiment mentioned in the preceding chapter, he came to the conclusion that "Heat, or that power which prevents the actual contact of the corpuscles of bodies, and which is the cause of our peculiar sensations of heat and cold, may be defined as a peculiar motion, probably a vibration, of the corpuscles of bodies, tending to separate them." Other passages might be quoted from these essays to show how the gifted youth of nineteen anticipated the science of subsequent decades, but in the main these early efforts were characterized by the faults of overwrought speculation and incomplete verification. He soon regretted the premature publication of his studies. "When I consider," he wrote, "the variety of theories that may be formed on the slender foundation of one or two facts, I am convinced that it is the business of the true philosopher to avoid them altogether. It is more laborious to accumulate facts than to reason concerning them; but one good experiment is of more value than the ingenuity of a brain like Newton's."