William T. Jeans

“ A power of character must underlie and enforce the work of the intellect. There were men who could so rouse and energise their pupils—so call forth their strength and the pleasure of its exercise—as to make the hardest work agreeable. Without this power it is questionable whether the teacher could ever really enjoy his vocation—with it, I do not know a higher, nobler, and more blessed calling than that of the man who, scorning the cramming so prevalent in our day, converts the knowledge he imparts into a lever, to lift, exercise, and strengthen the growing minds committed to his care. ”

“ A man is much to be pitied when the penetration of his mind and the fruitfulness of his invention furnish him with ideas of a delighted community attached by a faithful and delicate appreciation. Recall to him this world, above which his imagination had just now raised him; consider him among men whose knowledge and friendship are merely superficial, and you will be convinced that the art of inventing is often the art of self-tormenting.” Need we wonder, then, that after the utility of Morse’s telegraph was fully demonstrated, he experienced unexpected difficulty as to its adoption. ”

“ The men who have made electricity the handmaid of industry are nearly as widespread as the subtle force with which they have had to deal. The United Kingdom was the birth-place of the monarch of modern machinery—the steam-engine,—and also of the leading inventions in metallurgy which supply the framework of all our manufacturing machinery; but the pioneers and engineers of electricity have been of different nations and tongues. ”

“ If not a sparrow falls to the ground without a definite purpose in the plans of Infinite Wisdom, can the creation of an instrument so vitally affecting the interests of the whole human race have an origin less humble than the Father of every good and perfect gift? I am sure I have the sympathy of such an assembly as is here gathered together, if in all humility, and in the sincerity of a grateful heart, I use the words of Inspiration in ascribing honour and praise to Him to whom first of all and most of all it is pre-eminently due. ”

“ The year 1791, when Galvani published at Bologna a complete account of his experiments on animal electricity, in which the leg of a frog played such a memorable part, may therefore be described as the birth-time of modern electricity. In the same year was born the immortal Faraday, whose researches in electricity not only enriched science but silenced the voice of envy; and in the same year was born Samuel F. B. Morse, whose ingenuity and perseverance gave to the world one of the most original and useful methods of conveying intelligence by electricity. ”

“ Professor Tyndall has all the ardour of a reformer, without any tendency to vague and rash speculations. Recognising whatever is valuable in the researches of a former age, he extends a gracious hospitality to new suggestions. With a noble pride in his favourite branches of inquiry, he is not restricted to an exclusive range of research, but extends his intellectual vision over a wide field of observation. ”

“ Now it has been well observed that science is to the present age what art was to the middle ages; and such being the case, may not a similar interest to that described by Carlyle attach to the marvellous things done by means of electricity? A great deal is said about electricity, but very little about the men who made it subject to the will of man, who converted it into “the pulse of speech” which annihilates time and space, and who made it “the greatest blessing that science has given to civilisation.” ”

“ Cullen Bryant observed that it might be said that “the civilised world is already full of memorials which speak the merit of our friend and the grandeur and utility of his invention. Every telegraphic station is such a memorial; every message sent from one of these stations to another may be counted among the honours paid to his name. Every telegraphic wire, strung from post to post, as it hums in the wind murmurs his eulogy. ”

“ To render to genius the homage which is its due, without regard to country or origin, is to honour one’s self. The Paris Academy of Sciences, always sympathising with English science, did not hesitate, during the troubled time of the wars of the Empire, to decree a grand prix to Sir Humphry Davy. ”

“ The English, as a rule, are inclined to be suspicious of a man who ventures beyond a special walk in the pursuit of knowledge. They have but little sympathy with the catholic taste which embraces a variety of objects, and is equally at home in the researches of science, the speculations of philosophy, the delights of poetry, and the graces of elegant literature. But a single exception to this trait is presented by Professor Tyndall. ”

“ In our own day men of respectable theological attainments are content to reflect, in lunar-like scintillations, the intellectual splendour, the massive diction, the rich and glowing periods that adorn their pages; and no better evidence could be given of the fine intelligence of John Tyndall, of Leighlin Bridge, than to say that his delight was in the works of these great men. ”

“ I have the honour to announce with lively satisfaction that a sum of 400,000 francs will be remitted to you in four annuities, in the name of France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, the Holy See, Sweden, Tuscany, and Turkey, as an honorary gratuity, and as a reward, altogether personal, of your useful labours. Nothing can better mark than this collective act of reward the sentiment of public gratitude which your invention has so justly excited. ”

“ Over such periods, when the stimulus of success is absent, he must be carried by his sense of duty. It may not be so quick an incentive as glory, but it is a nobler one, and gives a tone to character which glory cannot impart. That unflinching devotion to work, without which no real eminence in science is now attainable, implies the writing at certain times of stern resolve upon the student’s character: ‘I work not because I like work, but because I ought to work.’ At Marburg my study was warmed by a large stove. ”

“ Professor Tyndall has extended or simplified our knowledge of these forces. Indeed he may be said to have revealed some hidden links in the chain of causation. He has extended and consolidated our knowledge of magnetism; as an explorer and discoverer in the domain of radiant heat he stands almost alone; and as a lecturer and experimentalist he has probably done more than any other man to popularise the science of electricity.
There is a growing tendency in the present day to appreciate personal achievement more highly than ancient lineage ”

“ There is a new mathematics and a new astronomy, a new chemistry and a new electricity, a new geology and a new biology. Great voices have spoken, and have transformed the world of thought and research as much as the material products of science have altered the aspects of external life. The telegraph and dynamo-machine have not more changed the conditions of business and industry than the speculations of Darwin and Helmholtz and their compeers have affected those of philosophy and science. ”

“ Schemes like Harmony Hall look admirable upon paper; but, inasmuch as they are formed with reference to an ideal humanity, they go to pieces when brought into collision with the real one. At Queenswood, I learned, by practical experience, that two factors went to the formation of a teacher. In regard to knowledge he must, of course, be master of his work. But knowledge is not all. There might be knowledge without power—the ability to inform without the ability to stimulate. ”

“ He had worked successfully as an inventor for seventeen years before his first telegraph was invented, and he continued to work at his favourite subjects for seventeen years after his last great telegraphic invention. Having confined our attention in the last two chapters almost exclusively to the progress of the telegraph, it remains for us to follow the inventor into the bye-paths which he now and then delighted to tread, as well as to follow his course during his latter years along the highway of electrical science in which his genius appeared to find its most congenial exercise. ”

“ You have asked me to give these lectures, and I cannot turn them to better account than by asking you to remember that the lecturer is usually the distributor of intellectual wealth amassed by better men. It is not as lecturers but as discoverers that you ought to employ your highest men. Keep your sympathetic eye upon the originator of knowledge. Give him the freedom necessary for his researches; above all things avoiding that question which ignorance so often addresses to genius—What is the use of your work? ”

“ CHAPTER IV.
“A name, even in the most commercial nation, is one of the few things which cannot be bought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed. But this unwillingness only increases desire in him who believes his merit sufficient to overcome it.”—Dr. Johnson.
From the two preceding chapters it appears that Professor Wheatstone was not only the inventor of the first electric telegraph used in England, but that he at last invented the most perfect transmitter of telegraphic intelligence. ”

“ Carlyle has said of art in general that biography is almost the one thing needful. In the literature of electricity, it has hitherto been the one thing lacking. The subject is not destitute of historic as well as scientific interest; and hence it is possible that the general reader may be led to regard it from Terence’s point of view that “whatsoever concerns mankind concerns me.” It is possible, too, that a record of the achievements which have brought electricity to its present state of utility, may impart a reflex interest to that science. “Art is art,” says Carlyle, “yet man also is man. ”

“ The unanimous choice made by the Committee of the Economic Arts, and cordially ratified by the Council, honours our society as much as him who is the object of it. We hope to give on this occasion a testimony of sympathy with a nation in which science is held in such high esteem. In conferring on Sir Charles Wheatstone a reward rendered valuable by those who have already received it, the Council performs a pure act of justice, and acquits, at least for some among us, a debt of gratitude. ”

“ It seemed to be generally forgotten that Professor Tyndall had stated before the British Association in 1868 that the utmost the materialist “can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages. If you ask him whence is this ‘matter,’ who or what divided it into molecules, he has no answer. Science also is mute in reply to these questions. ”

“ He himself stated that it rarely, if ever, happened that any invention was so independent of all others that a single individual could justly appropriate to himself the entire credit of all its parts. “It is only,” he said, “when the nature of an invention is properly understood that the justice of the ascription of honour to the individual inventor is perceived. ”

“ Distance is time, and when by steam, whether on water or on land, personal communication is facilitated, and when orders are conveyed from one extremity of the Empire to another almost like a flash of lightning, the facility of governing a large State becomes almost equal to the facility of governing the smallest. ”

“ So far as we can judge from the history of the human race and of the past, I am of opinion that, as long as history lasts, the name of Wheatstone will be associated with that of Watt and Stephenson as men who, in the era of Queen Victoria, were prominent in the introduction of those magnificent enterprises by which the whole world has been practically reduced to one-twentieth part of its former size. ”

“ It was an accidental circumstance of a different kind that directed the attention of Samuel Morse from electricity to art. His father, being a man of small means and having a large family, was unable to supply the enthusiastic student with sufficient funds to complete his college course, and to provide for the deficiency, Samuel betook himself to painting the portraits of such of his companions as could afford to pay him five dollars, and it is said that by this means he partly defrayed the cost of his education. A first success, like a first love, often forms the keynote of a life ”

“ There are five mechanical inventions that have conferred incalculable benefit on the industrial world in modern times—the printing press, the steam engine, the electric telegraph, the dynamo, and the Bessemer process of steel making. The originality of every one of these has been either divided or disputed, with the single exception of the Bessemer process, which is therefore the only one that is universally known by the inventor’s name. In the case of the electric telegraph the originality or priority of Professor Wheatstone was disputed not only at home but abroad. ”

“ Besides the impression produced on a stranger by his genius and learning, I may be permitted to say that I have met with few men of more attractive manners. His mental activity gives an air of intensity to his expression, though without a trace of vehemence, or an eager passion for utterance. In his movements he is singularly alert, gliding through the streets with the rapidity and noiselessness of an arrow, paying little attention to external objects ”

“ Professor Tyndall did not, however, adopt the germ theory on the authority of Pasteur. He not only discovered it for himself, but demonstrated its accuracy by innumerable experiments, in the course of which he made use of 10,000 vessels. To him, too, science owes the use of the electric beam as an explorer of germ particles which could not otherwise be made visible by the best optical aids. The most exquisitely minute particles, which could not be detected by the most powerful glasses, have been revealed in the air by the electric beam. ”