[as] "The philosopher, not less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought. 'The problem of philosophy,' according to Plato, 'is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute.' It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. That law, when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognized itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula." Emerson. Idealism.
"He who studies the concrete and neglects the abstract cannot be called an interpreter of nature. Such was Bacon's judgment." Robert Leslie Ellis, in Bacon's Works, Vol. I. p. 26.
"If a man's knowledge be confined to the efficient and material causes (which are unstable causes, and merely vehicles, or causes which convey the form in certain cases) he may arrive at new discoveries in reference to substances in some degree similar to one another, and selected beforehand; but he does not touch the deeper boundaries of things. But whosoever is acquainted with Forms, embraces the unity of nature in substances the most unlike; and is able therefore to detect and bring to light things never yet done, and such as neither the vicissitudes of nature, nor industry in experimenting, nor accident itself, would ever have brought into act, and which would never have occurred to the thought of man. From the discovery of Forms therefore results truth in speculation and freedom in operation."—Bacon. Novum Organon, Book II. Aph. III.
[at] The problem awaiting the philosophic physicist runs as follows:—
It remains to be seen how closely and with what degree of distinctness, science can approximate these impalpable forces governing the natural world, to the forces we are accustomed to call immaterial, because they become known to us by the activities of Thought and Will.
This problem—the incorporeity of Matter, or a near approach to it—has been a favourite subject of speculation in all ages. The curious reader may track it from the pre-and post-Christian Greeks through Arabian and Jewish philosophies to the Schoolmen (who borrowed from Jews unknowingly) and so transmitted it down like an heirloom to our own later controversialists. The subject has been treated on Metaphysical grounds, for Religious interests, or as a weapon keen edged in demolishing antagonistic cosmologies. But it has not often been entertained for purely scientific reasons, and as one of those so-called "useless questions" which always turn out most prolific seminal principles, fertile in explaining nature and throwing out branches in numerous unforeseen directions.
It was thus however and with no side views that the illustrious Faraday looked at this subject. With what effect may be best learned by putting together two separate accounts of his reasoning.
In 1844, Dr. Bence Jones informs us Faraday (then in his 53rd year) indulged in "A speculation respecting that view of the nature of matter which considers its ultimate atoms as centres of force, and not as so many little bodies surrounded by forces.... The particle, indeed, is supposed to exist only by these forces, and where they are it is."
This speculation did in fact give a tone to that memorable season—now thirty years ago.
Dr. Tyndall says:—"On Friday, January 19, 1844, he opened the weekly evening meetings of the Royal Institution by a discourse entitled 'A speculation touching Electric Conduction and the nature of Matter.' In this discourse he not only attempts the overthrow of Dalton's Theory of Atoms, but also the subversion of all ordinary scientific ideas regarding the nature and relations of Matter and Force. He objected to the use of the term atom:—'I have not yet found a mind,' he says, 'that did habitually separate it from its accompanying temptations; and there can be no doubt that the words definite proportions, equivalent, primes, etc., which did and do fully express all the facts of what is usually called the atomic theory in chemistry, were dismissed because they were not expressive enough, and did not say all that was in the mind of him who used the word atom in their stead,'" (Faraday as a Discoverer, pp. 119-20.)