Was pre-eminent in his day as a chemist. Faraday was the son of a blacksmith, and apprenticed to a bookbinder. His early education was very limited, but he had from the first a strong bias towards chemical science. Having an opportunity to attend the last four lectures of Sir Humphry Davy, he took notes and wrote out a sketch of the lectures, and sent it to Sir Humphry. Sir Humphry was so struck with the character of these notes that he recommended the appointment of young Faraday as an assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution. From that time Faraday devoted himself entirely to chemical research, and for many years before his death he was the most eminent authority in the world on that subject. His researches and discoveries were published in the “Philosophical Transactions,” and have been republished in 3 vols. as “Experimental Researches in Chemistry.” For the last forty years of his life, he delivered annual Lectures on Chemistry at the Royal Institution. These lectures were celebrated, not only for their eminent scientific character, but for the extraordinary fascinations of style which held the auditors spell-bound. One of his most popular publications was “Chemistry of a Candle, a Course of Six Lectures.”

Personal

  Sir Humphry Davy has the honor to inform the managers that he has found a person who is desirous to occupy the situation in the Institution lately filled by William Payne. His name is Michael Faraday. He is a youth of twenty-two years of age. As far as Sir H. Davy has been able to observe or ascertain, he appears well fitted for the situation. His habits seem good; his disposition active and cheerful, and his manner intelligent. He is willing to engage himself on the same terms as given to Mr. Payne at the time of quitting the Institution.

  My time has lately been much occupied with Faraday, the great English chemist, who has lately acquired a very high celebrity indeed. He fears that his time will not permit him to visit the Observatory; so at dinner, where I met him on Friday last, we agreed that I should breakfast with him this morning at the Bilton Hotel, which I accordingly did. I had lately been reading enough of chemistry, and especially of its connexion with electricity, to enjoy hearing Faraday talk on this subject. But what I most enjoyed was the finding that he, who has been proceeding entirely by induction and experiment, and who is the most distinguished practical chemist in England, has been led to almost as anti-material a view as myself who have proceeded altogether in the opposite direction, and from the other pole of mind. He finds more and more the conception of matter an incumbrance and complication in the explanation of phenomena, instead of an assistance. He sees no proofs from chemical facts, or from the phenomena of definite proportions, for the existence of those little bulks or bricks, of which so many fancy the outward world to be built up. And as to his chief study, electricity, after having long given up the fancy of two fluids, he now sees no need nor use for even one, and seems to regard the electrical current as only a transference of power—nearly as, in modern optics, we regard the transmission of light as consisting in the motion of a motion.

  I was unexpectedly introduced to Faraday just before the lecture; pleasant man, with a very quick and lively expression of countenance. The lecture was on Electrical Eels, etc.; most elegant lecturer he is; brilliant and rapid experimenter. I hope to hear him again.

  In the evening heard a lecture by Faraday. What a contrast to Carlyle! A perfect experimentalist,—with an intellect so clear! Within his sphere, un uomo compito. How great would that man be who could be as wise on Mind and its relations as Faraday is on Matter!

  Faraday was one of a small band who added to our scientific knowledge a whole continent of truth, who have done for the future peace and wealth of the nation more than conquerors of kingdoms, or heroes of battlefields…. While earning countless wealth for the nation, Faraday’s own income seems never, but in one year, to have exceeded the modest bounds of £300. On that noble testimony of a nation’s gratitude we left him to live and die.

  It is but little for me to remind you that a greater philosopher than MICHAEL FARADAY has rarely been known among us within the memory of recent times; but I am bold to add that never have we known a man who more perfectly exhibited the meekness, the peaceableness, the humility, the blamelessness, of the true child of God. I am not consciously exaggerating when I say that there went forth a virtue from that Christian man, which made those who had come from his presence feel happier, and, I may venture to say, even better men. Think not I am thus striving to laud the creature; I am rather praising the Creator by whose Divine Spirit our Faraday was made what he was. Nevertheless this great and good man never obtruded the strength of his faith upon those whom he publicly addressed; upon principle he was habitually reticent on such topics, because he believed they were ill suited for the ordinary assemblages of men. Yet on more than one occasion when he had been discoursing on some of the magnificent prearrangements of Divine Providence, so lavishly scattered in nature, I have seen him struggle to repress the emotion which was visibly striving for utterance; and then, at last, with one single far-reaching word, he would just hint at his meaning rather than express it. On such occasions he only who had ears to hear, could hear.

  Attended Tyndall’s lecture (on Faraday, his genius and merits), which Tyndall treated as quite heroic. A full and somewhat distinguished audience, respectful, noiselesss, attentive, but not fully sympathetic, I should say; such, at least, was my own case, feeling rather that the eulogy was perhaps overdone. As to myself, “the grandeur of Faraday’s discoveries,” &c., excited in me no real enthusiasm, nor was either his faculty or his history a matter I could reckon heroic in that high degree. In sad fact, I cared but little for these discoveries—reckoned them uncertain—to my dark mind, and not by any means the kind of “discoveries” I wanted to be made at present. “Can you really turn a ray of light on its axis by magnetism? and if you could, what should I care?”

  As a man, the beauty and the nobleness of his character was formed by very many great qualities. Among these the first and greatest was his truthfulness. His noble nature showed itself in his search for truth. He loved truth beyond all other things; and no one ever did or will search for it with more energy than he did. His second great quality was his kindness (agapê). It was born in him, and by his careful culture it grew up to be the rule of his life; kindness to every one, always—in thought, in word, and in deed. His third great quality was his energy. This was no strong effort for a short time, but a lifelong lasting strife to seek and say that which he thought was true, and to do that which he thought was kind. Some will consider that his strong religious feeling was the prime cause of these great qualities; and there is no doubt that one of his natural qualities was greatly strengthened by his religion. It produced what may well be called his marvellous humility.

  His name, even after his active labours had ceased, ennobled the Royal Institution both at home and abroad—a name scarcely more eminent from the great discoveries attached to it than from those private virtues and affections which endeared him to all who knew him. His love for science was as pure as all his other affections, wholly unalloyed by jealousy, seeking only for truth. His earnestness and natural eloquence as a lecturer will ever be remembered by those, young as well as old, who crowded to listen to him in that building which was his home for more than fifty years. The infirmity which came upon him during the last year or two of his life, touched not the moral part of his nature, which remained unaltered to the very last.

  We think of Michael Faraday, the chemist and electrician, who knew so well how to reconcile the boldest researches into the heights and deeps of science with the sincerest spirit of faith and devotion; the memory of whose delightful improvisations on the science he loved to expound must remain for ever with all who had the privilege of hearing the unrivalled lecturer deliver his annual discourses at the Royal Institution.

  For relaxation of mind, he frequently visited the theatres. His food was simple but generous. At his two o’clock dinner he ate his meat and drank his wine. He began the meal by lifting both hands over the dish before him, and in tones of a son addressing a father of whose love he was sure, asked a blessing on the food. To those whom he knew to be animated by something higher than mere curiosity, he talked freely of religion; but he never introduced the subject himself. Nearer than anybody known to the writer he came to the fulfilment of the precept. “Take no thought for the morrow.” He had absolute confidence that, in case of need, the Lord would provide. A man with such feeling and such faith was naturally heedless of laying by for the future. His faith never wavered; but remained to the end as fresh as when in 1821 he made his “confession of sin and profession of faith.” In reply to a question from Lady Lovelace, he described himself as belonging to “a very small and despised sect of Christians, known—if known at all—as Sandemanians; our hope is founded on the faith as it is in Christ.” He made a strict severance of his religion from his science. Man could not, by reasoning, find out God. He believed in a direct communication between God and the human soul, and these whisperings and monitions of the Divinity were in his view qualitatively different from his data of science. Faraday was a man of strong emotions. He was generous, charitable, sympathising with human suffering. His five-pound note was ever ready for the meritorious man who had been overtaken by calamity. The tenderness of his nature rendered it difficult for him to refuse the appeal of distress. Still, he knew the evil of indiscriminate almsgiving, and had many times detected imposture; so that he usually distributed his gifts through some charity organisation which assured him that they would be well bestowed.

General

  An essay [“Conservation of Force”] full of thought and power, and which should be carefully studied by every one who wishes to understand the direction which the highest speculations of physical science are now taking.

  Mr. Faraday’s researches and discoveries have raised him to the highest rank among European philosophers, while his high faculty of expounding, to a general audience, the result of recondite investigations, makes him one of the most attractive lecturers of the age. He has selected the most difficult and perplexing departments of physical science, the investigation of the reciprocal relations of heat, light, magnetism, and electricity; and by many years of patient and profound study, has tended greatly to simplify our ideas on these subjects. It is the hope of this philosopher that, should life and health be spared, he will be able to show that the imponderable agencies just mentioned are so many manifestations of one and the same force.

  In Faraday it would seem in an eminent degree the case, that the moral controlled and gave force to the intellectual being; the emotional nature became one with the intelligence; and, as is always the case where this is, gave grandeur and eminent dignity to the intellect. Hence Dr. Tyndall notices with admiration his love of truth; of course we do not mean in the mere inferior sense, that of course, but in the unhappiness produced in Faraday’s mind by all doubtful knowledge. He hated what is called doubtful knowledge, he could not condescend to reason upon data which admitted of doubt, and he hastened to transfer such either to the region of definite ignorance, or to show its certainty, and to permit it to be doubtful no more. Be one thing or other, he seemed to say to all unproved hypothesis; either come out as a solid truth, or disappear as a convicted lie. His mind moved in a marvellous region of hypothesis, and yet the habitual caution of his nature ever prevented him from being deceived himself, and still more faithfully held him from deceiving others.

  The year 1855 closed the series of experimental researches in electricity. It began in 1831 with his greatest discoveries, the induction of electric currents, and the evolution of electricity from magnetism; then it continued with terrestrial magneto-electric induction; then with the identities of electricity from different sources; then with conducting power generally. Then came electro-chemical decomposition; then the electricity of the voltaic pile; then the induction of a current on itself; then static induction; then the nature of the electric force or forces, and the character of the electric force in the gymnotus; then the source of power in the voltaic pile; then the electricity evolved by friction of steam; then the magnetisation of light and the illumination of magnetic lines of force; then new magnetic actions, and the magnetic condition of all matter; then the crystalline polarity of bismuth and its relation to the magnetic form of force; then the possible relation of gravity to electricity; then the magnetic and diamagnetic condition of bodies, including oxygen and nitrogen; then atmospheric magnetism; then the lines of magnetic force, and the employment of induced magneto-electric currents as their test and measure; and lastly the constancy of differential magne-crystallic force in different media, the action of heat on magne-crystals, and the effect of heat upon the absolute magnetic force of bodies. The record of this work, which he has left in his manuscripts and republished in his three volumes of “Electrical Researches,” from the papers in the “Philosophical Transactions,” will ever remain as his noblest monument—full of genius in the conception—full of finished and most accurate work in execution—in quantity so vast that it seems impossible one man could have done so much; and this amount of work appeared still more remarkable to those who knew that Anderson’s help might be summed up in two words—blind obedience. The use of magneto-electricity in induction machines, in electrotyping, and in lighthouses, are the most important practical applications of the “Experimental Researches in Electricity;” but it is vain to attempt to measure the stimulus and the assistance which these researches have given, and will give, to other investigators.

  The most exact of natural philosophers.

  Slenderly educated, and never quite mastering the amount of mathematics necessary for fully understanding the researches of more abstruse writers, he was gifted with an admirable literary style, so clear and simple that it is hard to say whether Faraday has done more to advance science by popularising his own and other men’s knowledge, than by adding to the actual amount of hitherto unknown data. His lectures on the chemistry of a candle, and on the non-metallic elements, are models of addresses delivered before a non-scientific audience, while his work on chemical manipulation is so valuable that, in spite of the advance of late years, it is still regarded as a classic.

  There are many branches of science into which it would be absurd for us to penetrate with our present object. Chemistry, for instance, brings before us the illustrious name of Michael Faraday; but Faraday, though one of the most charming of lecturers, wrote little, and was, in the little that he did write, too technical for our purpose.

  As a lecturer on natural science he had few equals, from a happy gift of lucid exposition and illustration.

  In genius he [Davy] was unquestionably superior to Faraday; in true nobility of character he was far below him. It is almost impossible to avoid comparing him with Faraday. Indeed it is one of the penalties of his position that he has to be tried by so severe a standard, and it may well be that his good name, which, as Bacon says, is the proper inheritance of the deceased, has suffered unduly in consequence. His true place in the history of science is defined by his discoveries; it is a sad reflection that the lustre of his fame has been dimmed rather than heightened by what has been styled the greatest of them all—Faraday. But there has undoubtedly been injustice in the comparisons which have been made. What Davy was to Faraday, Faraday would have been the first to admit. Davy made himself what he was by the sheer force of his unaided genius; what Faraday became was in large measure due to his connection with Davy, and the germs of his greatest works are to be traced to this association. This fact has been frankly acknowledged by Faraday. To the end of his days he regarded Davy as his true master, preserving to the last, in spite of his knowledge of the moral frailties of Davy’s nature, the respect and even reverence which is to be seen in his early lecture notes and in his letters to his friend Abbott. Faraday was not easily roused to anger, but nothing so effectually moved him as any aspersion of Davy’s character as a man of science, or any insinuation of ungenerous treatment of himself by Davy.

  Nor does the rank of prince of experimenters do Faraday full justice, for he was far more than a mere experimenter. He had not, perhaps, quite the intuitive insight of Davy, and he utterly lacked the profound mathematical training of Young. None the less was he a man who could dream dreams on occasion, and, as Maxwell has insisted, think in mathematical channels if not with technical symbols. Only his wagon must always traverse earth though hitched to a star. His dreams guided him onward, but ever the hand of experiment kept check over the dreams.