Silvanus P. Thompson

“ We have many processes by which the form of the power may be so changed, that an apparent conversion of one into the other takes place. So we can change chemical force into the electric current, or the current into chemical force. The beautiful experiments of Seebeck and Peltier show the convertibility of heat and electricity; and others by Oersted and myself show the convertibility of electricity and magnetism. But in no case, not even in those of the gymnotus and torpedo, is there a pure creation or a production of power without a corresponding exhaustion of something to supply it. ”

“ All this is true of the teaching afforded by any part of physical science. Electricity is often called wonderful, beautiful; but it is so only in common with the other forces of nature. The beauty of electricity or of any other force is not that the power is mysterious, and unexpected, touching every sense at unawares in turn, but that it is under law, and that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely. ”

“ I have learned just enough to perceive my ignorance, and, ashamed of my defects in everything, I wish to seize the opportunity of remedying them. The little knowledge I have gained in languages makes me wish to know more of them, and the little I have seen of men and manners is just enough to make me desirous of seeing more; added to which, the glorious opportunity I enjoy of improving in the knowledge of chemistry and the sciences continually determines me to finish this voyage with Sir Humphry Davy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Faraday, always your sincere friend and well-wisher,
H. Davy.
The wish that Davy expressed that Faraday might “do something” for himself and likewise for science was destined soon to come to fulfilment. But in the case of one who had worked so closely and had been so intimately associated as an assistant, it must necessarily be no easy matter always to draw a distinction between the work of the master and that of the assistant. Ideas suggested by one might easily have occurred to the other, when their thoughts had so long been directed to the same ends. ”

“ If a satisfactory theory can be given, it ought to be given. If we doubt a received opinion, let us not leave the doubt unnoticed and affirm our own ideas, but state it clearly, and lay down also our objections. If the scientific world is divided in opinion, state both sides of the question, and let each one judge for himself by noticing the most striking and forcible circumstances on each side. Then, and then only, shall we do justice to the subject, please the audience, and satisfy our honour, the honour of a philosopher. ”

“ That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum and without the mediation of anything else, by and through which this action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. ”

“ Do not many fail because they look rather to the renown to be acquired than to the pure acquisition of knowledge, and the delight which the contented mind has in acquiring it for its own sake? I am sure I have seen many who would have been good and successful pursuers of science, and have gained themselves a high name, but that it was the name and the reward they were always looking forward to—the reward of the world’s praise. ”

“ Nobody can deny that this new theory of electricity and magnetism, originated by Faraday and developed by Maxwell, is in itself well consistent, in perfect and exact harmony with all the known facts of experience, and does not contradict any one of the general axioms of dynamics, which have been hitherto considered as the fundamental truths of all natural science, because they have been found valid, without any exception, in all known processes of nature. ”

“ He had little sympathy with either text-book science or with mere examinations. “I have far more confidence,” he wrote, “in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it. Nothing is so good as an experiment which, whilst it sets error right, gives an absolute advancement in knowledge.” In another place he wrote:—“Let the imagination go, guarding it by judgment and principles, but holding it in and directing it by experiment.” For book-learned chemistry and mere chemical theory, apart from experimental facts, he had an undisguised contempt. ”

“ With pleasure we used to recall that we made one another’s acquaintance under the auspices of that affectionate and helpful philosopher whose example so truly witnessed that science does not dry up the heart’s blood. At Montpellier, beside the hospitable hearth of Bérard, the associate of Chaptal, doyen of our corresponding members, Faraday has left memories equally charged with an undying sympathy which his master could never have inspired. We admired Davy, we loved Faraday. ”

“ The long struggle of the first half of the eighteenth century was not merely on the question of a medium to serve for gravific mechanism, but on the correctness of the Newtonian law of gravitation as a matter of fact, however explained. The corresponding controversy in the nineteenth century was very short, and it soon became obvious that Faraday’s idea of the transmission of electric force by a medium not only did not violate Coulomb’s law of relation between force and distance, but that, if real, it must give a thorough explanation of that law. ”

“ There are no lectures so famous, in the best sense of the word so popular, certainly none sustained at so high a level, as the lectures of the Royal Institution.
THE FAMOUS LECTURES.
But it was not always thus. Davy’s brilliant but ill-balanced genius had drawn fashionable crowds to the morning lectures which he gave. Brande proved to be a much more humdrum lecturer; and though with young Faraday at his elbow he found his work of lecturing a task “on velvet,” he was not exactly an inspiring person. ”

“ In the researches now under review the ratio of speculation and reasoning to experiment is far higher than in any of Faraday’s previous works. Amid much that is entangled and dark we have flashes of wondrous insight and utterances which seem less the product of reasoning than of revelation. I will confine myself here to one example of this divining power:—By his most ingenious device of a rapidly rotating mirror, Wheatstone had proved that electricity required time to pass through a wire, the current reaching the middle of the wire later than its two ends. ”

“ And this was to illustrate a research already made and completed, of which the bare scientific results had already been communicated in a memoir to the Royal Society. A mere enumeration of the eminent men who have thus given their time and labours to the Royal Institution would fill many pages. It is little cause for wonder then that the lecture-theatre at Albemarle Street is crowded week after week in the pursuit of science under conditions like these; or that every lecturer is spurred on by the spirit of the place to do his subject the utmost justice by the manner in which he handles it. ”

“ The general conclusion of philosophers seems to be that such cases are by far the most numerous. And for my own part, considering the relation of a vacuum to the magnetic force, and the general character of magnetic phenomena external to the magnet, I am more inclined to the notion that in the transmission of the force there is such an action, external to the magnet, than that the effects are merely attraction and repulsion at a distance. ”

“ Up to the present time the mathematicians who have rejected Faraday’s method of stating his law as unworthy of the precision of their science, have never succeeded in devising any essentially different formula which shall fully express the phenomena without introducing hypotheses about the mutual action of things which have no physical existence, such as elements of currents which flow out of nothing, then along a wire, and finally sink into nothing again. ”

“ When the natural truth, and the conventional representation of it, most closely agree, then are we most advanced in our knowledge. The emission and æther theories present such cases in relation to light. The idea of a fluid or of two fluids is the same for electricity; and there the further idea of a current has been raised, which, indeed, has such hold on the mind as occasionally to embarrass the science as respects the true character of the physical agencies, and may be doing so even now to a degree which we at present little suspect. ”

“ Faraday had dealt with the question—at that time a topic of excited controversy—of the origin of the electromotive force in a cell, Volta, who knew nothing of the chemical actions, ascribed it to the contact of dissimilar metals, whilst Wollaston, Becquerel, and De la Rive considered it the result of chemical actions. The controversy has long ceased to interest the scientific world; for, with the recognition of the principle of the conservation of energy, it became evident that mere contact cannot provide a continuing supply of energy. ”

“ His devotion to the practical applications of science is attested by his untiring work for improving the lighthouses of our coast. It is believed that his death was accelerated by a severe cold caught when on a visit of lighthouse inspection during stormy weather.
Faraday was never ashamed of the circumstance of his having risen from a humble origin. In his letters he not unfrequently alludes to things that remind him of his bookbinding experiences, or of boyish episodes in his father’s smithy. Yet he had none of the vulgar pride of ascent which too often dogs the path of the self-made man. ”

“ Though they are often obscure, a fine vein of philosophic thought runs through these investigations. The mind of the philosopher dwells amid those agencies which underlie the visible phenomena of induction and conduction; and he tries by the strong light of his imagination to see the very molecules of his dielectrics. It would, however, be easy to criticise these researches, easy to show the looseness, and sometimes the inaccuracy, of the phraseology employed; but this critical spirit will get little good out of Faraday. ”

“ LIFE AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. Amongst the scientific societies of Great Britain, the Royal Institution of London occupies a conspicuous place. It has had many imitators in its time, yet it remains unique. A “learned society” it may claim to be, in the sense that it publishes scientific transactions, and endeavours to concentrate within itself and promote the highest science, within a certain range of subjects. In some respects it resembles a college; for it appoints professors, and provides them with space, appliances, and materials for research, and a theatre wherein to lecture. ”

“ Living and working amongst the appliances of his laboratory, letting his thoughts play freely around the phenomena, incessantly framing hypotheses to account for the facts, and as incessantly testing his hypotheses by the touchstone of experiment, never hesitating to push to their logical conclusion the ideas suggested by experiment, however widely they might seem to lead from the accepted modes of thought, he worked on with a scientific prevision little short of miraculous. ”

“ The year 1820 was marked in the annals of science by the discovery, by Oersted of Copenhagen, of the prime fact of electromagnetism, the deflexion which is produced upon a magnetic needle by an electric current that passes either under or over the needle. Often had it been suspected that there must be some connection between the phenomena of electricity and those of magnetism. The similarities between the attractions and repulsions caused by electrified bodies, and those due to the magnet when acting on iron, had constantly suggested the possibility that there was some real connection. ”

“ A flame should be lighted at the commencement, and kept alive with unremitting splendour to the end. For this reason I very much disapprove of breaks in a lecture, and where they can by any means be avoided they should on no account find place.... For the same reason—namely, that the audience should not grow tired—I disapprove of long lectures; one hour is long enough for anyone. ”

“ In one of his later experimental researches he wrote:—
As an experimentalist, I feel bound to let experiment guide me into any train of thought which it may justify; being satisfied that experiment, like analysis, must lead to strict truth if rightly interpreted; and believing also that it is in its nature far more suggestive of new trains of thought and new conditions of natural power. ”