FARADAY.
The maxim current among European scientists, that it is well to wait
before accepting any scientific discovery to see what will be said about
it on the other side of the Rhine, throws a rather curious sidelight on
the supposed absoluteness of scientific knowledge. Gallic enthusiasm or
German subtlety may evolve plausible theories that look like scientific
discoveries, but the destructive criticism of the neighbor nation
usually saves the scientific world from deception. Not infrequently, the
English-speaking scientists held the balance between these rivals in the
intellectual world, and their adhesion to either party or side of a
question secured its dominance. When all three, Germans and French and
English, are agreed as to the value of a scientific discovery, then it
may be looked upon as having some of the absoluteness, or at least
possesses for the moment the finality of scientific truth. If this
triple agreement be taken as the criterion of the significance of a
great scientist's work, then must Michael Faraday be considered as
without doubt one of the greatest scientists of our time, and probably
the greatest experimental scientist that the world has known.
[Illustration: MICHAEL FARADAY]
Dubois Reymond, in Berlin, declared Faraday "the greatest
experimentalist of all times, and the greatest physical discoverer that
ever lived." Professor Martius said before the Academy of Sciences at
Munich, "Deservedly has Faraday been called the greatest experimenter of
his epoch, and that the greatest epoch of scientific experimentation
down to our time." Dumas, the French chemist, in the panegyric delivered
before the French Academy of Sciences, declared that Faraday was "the
greatest scientific scholar that the Academy ever possessed." In order
to give a picture of what he had accomplished in electricity, added
Dumas, one would have to write a complete treatise on that subject.
"There is nothing in this department of science that Faraday has not
investigated completely or very materially modified. Much of this
chapter of our modern science is his creation and belongs undeniably to
him." Beside these testimonies from French and German scientific
contemporaries must be placed Tyndall's appreciation, which sets forth
his brother scientist's merits. "Take him all in all," he said, "it must
be admitted, I think, that Michael Faraday was the greatest experimental
scientist that the world has ever seen."
Nor did these magnificent appreciations of Faraday cease when the
enthusiasm for his memory, immediately after his death, had faded
somewhat into sober realization of his merits. When Dumas summed up
Faraday in the first Faraday lecture of the English Chemical Society, he
said: "Faraday was a type of the most fortunate and the most
accomplished of the learned men of our age. His hand, in the execution
of his conceptions, kept pace with his mind in designing them; he never
wanted boldness when he undertook an experiment, never lacked resources
to insure success, and was full of discretion when interpreting results.
His hardihood, which never halted once he had undertaken a task, and his
wariness, which felt its way carefully in adopting a received
conclusion, will ever serve as models for the experimentalist."
It is evident that the life of Faraday should be of supreme interest for
a generation that is mainly interested in experimental science, and it
so happens that his career contains many other sources of interest; for
Faraday was a self-made man, who owed very little to anyone but himself
and his own genius. Besides, he was a deep thinker with regard to all
the problems of human life as well as those of science, and while he was
a genial, kindly friend to those near him, the charming associate whom
scientific intimates always welcomed, he had no illusions with regard to
life being the end of all things, but looked confidently to the
hereafter, and shaped his life here from that point of view.
Michael Faraday was born at Newington Butts, now called Stoke Newington,
an outskirt of London, in Surrey, September 22d, 1791. His father was a
journeyman blacksmith whose health was not very good, and as a
consequence, the family suffered not a little from poverty. Both his
parents were noted for their good habits, industrious lives and deep
religious feelings. In spite of their poverty, as is much oftener the
case than is sometimes thought, their children were brought up very
carefully and had a precious training in high principles. Like most of
his great colleagues in scientific discovery, Faraday had to begin to
earn his livelihood early in life. Of educational opportunities he had
practically none. He learned to read and write, and probably had a
certain slight training in doing simple sums in arithmetic, but that
was the extent of his formal teaching, and much of that he got at home.
He had to help in the support of his family, and so it seemed fortunate
that not far away from his home there was a bookstore and bindery, the
owner of which became interested in the Faradays and took Michael as an
errand boy when he was scarcely thirteen years of age.
It was here that the future scientist began his education for himself
and, strange as it may seem, laid the deep foundation of his knowledge
of science. For the first year he carried newspapers around to the
customers, and did his work so faithfully that at the end of this time
the book-binder offered to take him as an apprentice to the trade,
without the usual premium which used to be rather strictly required for
teaching boys their trades at that time. Faraday accepted this offer,
but proved to be interested much more than in the outsides of the books
he bound. Whatever of leisure there was he took advantage of to read a
number of works on experimental science that happened to be in the shop.
Luckily for him, some of these were classics. As an introduction to
chemistry, he had Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Chemistry" and Robert
Boyle's "Notes about the Producibleness of chimicall Principles." He was
even more interested in electricity than in chemistry, however, and
Lyons' "Experiments on Electricity" and the article on electricity in
the Encyclopedia Britannica, whetted his interest and made the boy wish
for more of such information. There probably could not be a better proof
of the fact that, a man who really has intellectual interests will find
the material with which to satisfy them, in spite of untoward
circumstances, than this boyish experience of Faraday.
It is a curious anticipation of Faraday's after-career that he at once
began to demonstrate by personal experiment some of the statements that
he found in the books. He procured a stock of chemicals as far as his
meagre salary would allow, and constructed a practical electrical
machine, though he had nothing better than a large glass bottle to serve
as a cylinder for it. When not yet fourteen, he noticed an advertisement
of a set of lectures on natural philosophy. He was at once taken with
the idea of going to them, but the price of admission, one shilling,
seemed to place them entirely beyond him. His elder brother, who
followed his father's trade of blacksmith, had more money than he, and,
when properly cajoled, was persuaded to provide the necessary shillings,
and so Faraday got to the lectures. Elder brothers do not often have to
lend shillings to their juniors for admission to scientific lectures now
any more than in Faraday's time, so that the incident seems worth
noting.
In attendance at these lectures, Faraday not only learned much that was
new to him in science, but met a number of earnest fellow-students and
formed some life-long friendships. He took copious notes, and afterwards
wrote them out in a fine, legible hand, making excellent drawings in
perspective of the apparatus employed in the experiments. His notes were
so extensive that Faraday bound them himself, in four volumes, with an
index. These volumes are still preserved in the library of the Royal
Institution as one of the precious treasures among its Faraday
relics.[30] The whole story of these early years of Faraday's life is a
series of illustrations of how a young man without the necessary
opportunities for his favorite studies can make them for himself.
Everything seemed to be against his acquiring a thorough knowledge of
science, yet he succeeded in creating for himself the equivalent of a
good scientific course out of his meagre chances to hear lectures and
read books on his favorite subject in the intervals of a busy life as
book-seller and book-binder.
Things did not always continue to run along as pleasantly in life for
young Faraday as while he was working for his book-binder friend as an
apprentice. With the conclusion of his apprenticeship he became a
journeyman book-binder, and his first employer proved to be a hard
task-master. It did not matter how much work Faraday did or how well, it
never quite satisfied this French émigré, until it is no wonder that
Faraday looked for another occupation. For a time, he had the congenial
occupation of acting as amanuensis for Sir Humphry Davy, who, while
working on a new violent explosive, probably chloride of hydrogen, met
with an accident which prevented him from using his eyes for some time.
This occupation, pleasant and even alluring as it was, lasted only for a
few days, however. It had the fortunate result of suggesting to Faraday
to apply to Sir Humphry Davy in person for a position not long after,
and it eventually brought him the position of assistant at the Royal
Institution.
His anxiety to secure this post had been increased by the growing
realization that a business life was not to his liking. It seemed to him
a waste of time, or worse, for a man to give himself up to the making of
money. Even thus young he had the ambition to add to the knowledge
possessed by mankind, and the insatiable desire to increase the
opportunities of others to learn whatever they were interested in.
Accordingly, he set about finding the chance to devote himself entirely
to science.
In writing years after to Dr. Paris, he says: "My desire to escape from
trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the
service of science, which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and
liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing
to Sir Humphry Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an
opportunity came in his way, he should favor my views; and at the same
time I sent the notes I had taken of his lectures." Davy called, not
long after, on one of his friends, who was at the time honorary
inspector of the models and apparatus at the Royal Institution, and with
the letter before him asked: "Here is a letter from a young man named
Faraday; he has been attending my lectures and wants me to give him
employment at the Royal Institution. What can I do?" "Do?" replied the
inspector; "put him to wash bottles. If he is good for anything, he will
do it directly; if he refuses, he is good for nothing." "No, no,"
replied Davy, "we must try him with something better than that."
Davy wrote a kind reply, and arranged for an interview with young
Faraday. In this, however, he candidly advised him to stick to his
business, telling him very plainly that "science was a harsh mistress,
and, from a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarded those who
devoted themselves to her service." He apparently put an end to all
further consideration of the subject by promising Faraday the
book-binding work of the Institution, and his own besides.
Faraday was not satisfied to go back to the book-shop, even with all
this kindly patronage, but there was nothing else for it, and so for a
time he continued at his duties and spent his spare moments reading
science and his evenings at scientific lectures, or in remaking the
experiments he had seen and others suggested by them, and above all in
rewriting the notes that he had taken. There is no livelier picture in
all the history of science, of how a man will, in spite of all
obstacles, get the things he cares for, if he really cares for them,
than that of Faraday thus teaching himself science in the face of what
seems almost insurmountable discouragement. Fortunately, not long after
he had been thus forcibly called to the attention of Sir Humphry Davy,
the former assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution not only
neglected his duties, but became a source of considerable annoyance. His
misfortune proved Faraday's opportunity. He was offered the post. The
salary was only twenty-five shillings a week, but he accepted it very
willingly. One might think that at last his scientific career was opened
for him, but his new post was no sinecure. The labors required from him,
indeed, were so manifold that it is somewhat surprising that he found
any time for his own improvement. His duties as set forth in writing
were:
"To attend and assist the lecturers and professors preparing for
and during lectures. Where any instruments or apparatus may be
required, to attend to their careful removal from the model room
and laboratory to the lecture room, and to clean and replace them
after being used, reporting to the managers such accidents as shall
require repair, a constant diary being kept by him for that
purpose. That in one day in each week he be employed in keeping
clean the models in the repository, and that all the instruments in
the glass cases be cleaned and dusted at least once within a
month."
The previous assistant had complained of the amount of work that was
required of him. It is easy to see that his duties were rather exacting
and time-taking. Faraday did not confine himself to them, though he did
perform them with great assiduity. His interest in experimental
chemistry was soon noted, and he was allowed to take his share in the
experiments going on in the laboratory. Some of his first work was the
extraction of sugar from beet-root; but he was soon to have abundant
experience of the deterring side of chemistry. Not long after he began
his work in the laboratory, he had to manufacture some bisulphide of
carbon, one of the most nauseating of compounds. He found it disgusting
enough as an experience, but the study of it brought its compensation.
It was much more than foul odors that Faraday had to encounter, for Davy
was still occupying himself with the study of the explosives, in the
investigation of which he had been injured the previous year. Faraday
suffered from four or five explosions during the course of the first
month or two of his employment. Indeed, the substance with which they
were experimenting proved so unreliable in this regard that, after a
second rather serious injury to Davy, further study of it was given up.
Once Faraday had secured his post at the Royal Institution, his
life-work was before him, and he became deeply engaged in scientific
speculations, investigations and experiments of all kinds. The young man
who had found and made opportunities when they were so distant and
difficult, now made use of all that were so ready at hand. He did not
confine himself to his laboratory work, however, but seems always to
have felt that the contact of minds engaged along the same lines was the
best possible way to be stimulated to knowledge. He applied and was
admitted as member of the Philosophical Society of London, an
association of some two score of men occupied with many things during
the day, but interested in science, so far as they could get the books
and the opportunities for its study. They met every Wednesday evening
and discussed various subjects in science or, as they called it then, in
philosophy, and they seem to have occupied themselves with many
questions in the social as well as the natural sciences. These men, most
of whom were older than Faraday, soon came to look up to him because of
the depth and increasing breadth of his knowledge, and we have some
emphatic expressions of their admiration for him.
Faraday's earliest successful scientific investigation was accomplished
in chemistry. This might have been expected, from the fact that he began
his work with Sir Humphry Davy, whose principal scientific
investigations had been concerned with chemistry. His own great
scientific work was to be done in electricity. Even in the brief time
that he devoted to chemistry, however, he succeeded in making some
discoveries of deep significance. For instance, in his special study of
chlorine, he demonstrated the existence of the two chlorides of carbon
which had not hitherto been obtained. Above all, he impressed his
personality upon methods in chemistry. He was the first to realize how
much technics were to mean in the modern advancement of science, and he
made methodic chemistry, in distinction from practical chemistry, the
object of very special study. His work on _Chemical Manipulation_ did
more to train successful students of chemistry and to make good
investigators in this department of science than any other single work
in his generation. It has continued to be of interest down even to our
own time, and is well worthy of consultation by all those who are
interested in chemistry as a science, and especially in original
research in that subject.
It was with regard to gases, however, that Faraday's most striking
chemical work was done. He succeeded in liquefying several gases, and
was the first to make clear that all matter could probably exist in each
of the three different states--solid, liquid and gaseous--according as
the proper conditions for each particular state were present. One might
almost have expected that the serious dangers incurred in his early days
in the Royal Institution, when his chief, Sir Humphry Davy, suffered so
severely and he himself was more than once involved, might have deterred
him from further investigation along similar lines; but Faraday's ardor
for scientific investigation overcame any hesitancy there might have
been. The effect of gases upon human beings proved as attractive to
Faraday as it had been to Davy. His experiments upon chlorine threatened
to prove seriously injurious to his throat, and he was warned of the
danger that he was running in the effort to determine whether such gases
were respirable and what their effects upon human beings were. The
warning was disregarded, however, though he exercised somewhat more care
in subsequent observations. His experiments in the respiration of gases
finally led him to a discovery of cardinal importance in the very
practical field of anæsthesia. Sir Humphry Davy, just at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, had made a series of interesting experiments
on nitrous oxide gas, the so-called "laughing gas," and had pointed out
very definitely its anæsthetic properties. While suffering from
toothache he had inhaled the gas, and had experienced prompt alleviation
of the pain. He described in detail these curious effects, and suggested
that there might be a place for nitrous oxide in surgery, at least for
minor operations. The words he employed with regard to this subject show
that the idea of anæsthesia, as we now understand it, had come to him
very definitely. Not quite a score of years later, Faraday, recalling
the experiments of Davy with nitrous oxide, studied sulphuric ether, and
showed that the inhalation of the vapor of this substance produced
anæsthetic effects very similar to those of nitrous oxide gas, but with
the possibility of prolonging them much more easily and apparently with
less danger than would be the case with the latter. In every history of
anæsthesia, these two sets of experiments at the Royal Institution must
be set down as foundation-stones, and Faraday's name particularly must
be hailed as one of the initiators of a supremely beneficent advance in
modern surgery.
Faraday had given up business to devote himself to science, and he was
not to be seduced from the purpose of making his life unselfish and
doing things, not for money, but for the good of science and his own
satisfaction. As a practical chemist, he soon had many opportunities to
increase his salary by making analyses for industrial purposes. During
one year, the amount of work thus offered him was paid for so well that
it formed an addition of some £500 sterling to his salary. It took away
precious time, however, that he might otherwise devote to original
work. As soon as Faraday realized this possibility of interference with
his scientific investigations, he cut it off, quite content to live on
the modest salary of his position at the Royal Institution. His action
in the matter would remind one very much of Pasteur, in the latter half
of the century, when asked by the Empress Eugénie, to whom he had been
just exhibiting his discoveries in fermentation, whether he would not
apply these to actual manufacture and so make a fortune for himself in
brewing. Pasteur replied that he thought it unworthy of a French
scientist to devote his time to money-making, with all the world of
science open before him.[29]
With a conscientious patriotism, however, that was typical of the man
and his ways, there was one exception to this rule of not taking outside
work that Faraday made. In a letter to Lord Auckland, long afterward, he
says: "I have given up for the last ten years or more, all professional
occupation and voluntarily resigned a large income, that I might pursue
in some degree my own objects of research. But in doing this I have
always, as a good subject, held myself ready to assist the government if
still in my power, but not for pay; for, except in one instance (and
then only for the sake of the person joined with me), I refused to take
it. I have had the honor and pleasure of application, and that very
recently, from the Admiralty, the Ordnance, the Home Office, the Woods
and Forests and other departments, all of which I have replied to and
will reply to as long as strength is left me."
As we have said, Faraday's principal work was accomplished in the domain
of electricity. His supreme discovery, and, indeed, the most important
practical discovery in the whole realm of electricity, was that of the
induction effect of a current of electricity on a neighboring circuit.
This was accomplished by experimental work of the highest order. Toward
the end of 1824, when he was about thirty-three, he came to the definite
conclusion that an electric current might be obtained by the motion of a
magnet. His mind had been prepared for such a conclusion by Oersted's
significant discovery in July, 1820, that an electric current acts
somewhat like a magnet when the wire through which it flows is free to
move. This discovery, definitely connecting electricity and magnetism,
had been elaborated to an important degree by Ampère, and its sphere of
application broadened by Wollaston. The curious though not unusual
result in such cases, that it is not those who are in immediate touch
with a great discoverer who develop or even apply his work, was
illustrated by the fact that Ampère, the Frenchman, took up Oersted's
discovery first, while Wollaston, working in England, had been the next
one to follow successfully in the path thus opened up. It takes genius
to go even a slight step farther into the unknown; the trained talent of
disciples does not suffice. It was now Faraday, though not under
Wollaston's influence, who was to continue successfully these labors.
In spite of his persuasion that a magnet would produce by induction an
electric current, and the further step that a current in one wire could
induce a current in another, experiments during seven years had brought
him very little nearer the actual demonstration of this important
principle. Those who think that great discoveries are made by accident
and almost fall into the laps of their makers, as the apple upon Newton,
should recall these seven years of unsuccessful labor on the part of
Faraday. Finally, in 1831, he obtained the first definite evidence that
an electric current can induce another in a different circuit. The
discovery meant so much for him, that he hesitated to believe in his own
success. Nearly a month after this first demonstration for himself, he
wrote to his friend Phillips: "I am busy just now again on
electro-magnetism, and think I have got hold of a good thing, but can't
say. It may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labor, I may
at last pull up."
He had long suspected, as we have said, that induction should occur, and
he had tried currents of different strength, but without result. One day
he noticed that, though he could not produce a permanent induced
current, whenever the primary current started or stopped, there was a
movement of the galvanometer connected with the secondary circuit,
though the galvanometer remained at zero so long as the primary current
flowed steadily. From this he proceeded to the demonstration that a bar
magnet suddenly thrust into a helix of copper wire produced the same
effect on the galvanometer, and evidently induced a transient current.
When the magnet was withdrawn, the galvanometer needle swung in the
opposite direction, showing another current, so that electrical currents
were evidently induced by the relative motions of a magnet and a
conductor. He continued his experiments in many different forms, and in
the short space of a little more than a week, once the first definite
hint was obtained, succeeded in so completely finding out the phenomena
of electro-magnetic induction that scarcely more than practical
applications in this subject were left for his successors.
Faraday's explanation of the induction of currents in the secondary
circuit was probably quite as important a contribution to science as the
series of experiments by which he demonstrated the occurrence of induced
currents. His mind was not of the order that would accept action at a
distance; that is, without some conducting medium through which the
action took place. The old aphorism of the scholastics, "_actio in
distans repugnat_"--action at a distance, that is, without a medium
intervening, is absurd--would have appealed to him as a basic truth. The
explanation that he outlined for induced currents was based on the lines
of magnetic force, which he had so often delineated by means of iron
filings. It was a favorite occupation of his, at moments of comparative
leisure, to make varied pictures in iron filings of magnetic fields as
they were exhibited under the influence of different combinations of
magnets. He strewed iron filings over "gum paper," and then when the
filings had arranged themselves in certain definite lines, he threw a
jet of steam on the paper, which melted the gum and fixed the filings in
position. He explained electrical action as the transmission of force
along such lines as these, and he thought the whole electric field was
filled with them.
Probably the best summary of Faraday's work on induction and its
significance has been given us by Clerk Maxwell, in his article on
Faraday, in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. There is
no doubt but that Maxwell, above all men of the nineteenth century, was
in a position to judge of the meaning of Faraday's work. He was not the
sort of a man to say things in a panegyric mood, and his article on
Faraday is indeed a model of well-considered judgment and critical
illumination. Summing up the significance not only of Faraday's great
discovery of induction, but also his theory in explanation of that
discovery, he does not hesitate to say that his (Faraday's) opinion is
the nearest approach to truth that has been advanced in this
much-discussed subject.
"After nearly half a century of labor of this kind, we may say that,
though the practical applications of Faraday's great discovery have
increased and are increasing in number and value every year, no
exception to the statement of these laws as given by Faraday has been
discovered; no new law has been added to them; and Faraday's original
statement remains to this day the only one which asserts no more than
can be verified by experiment, and the only one by which the theory of
the phenomena can be expressed in a manner which is actually and
numerically accurate, and at the same time within the range of
elementary methods of exposition."
With what eminent care and absolute truth Faraday's conclusions were
reached may be judged from some further expressions of Clerk Maxwell's
in the article just quoted, with regard to the attitude of certain
mathematicians toward Faraday's work. In this matter, Clerk Maxwell, in
talking on a theme that he had made especially his own, and in which his
opinion must carry the greatest possible weight, said:
"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 the
hypotheses about the mutual action of things which have no physical
existence, such as elements of currents, which flow out of nothing, then
along the wire, and finally sink into nothing again."
Faraday's results were described in papers afterwards incorporated in
his first series of "Experimental Researches," which were read before
the Royal Society, November 24th, 1841. These papers probably contain
the best possible proof of Faraday's genius as an experimentalist and a
leader in scientific observation. Within a few months after his first
successful experiment, he had succeeded in bringing to perfection the
whole doctrine of induction by currents and magnets, had laid down the
fundamental ideas which were to constitute the formal basis of
electro-magnetism for all time. Perhaps no better idea of the importance
of the discovery thus made by Faraday can be given than will be found in
Clerk Maxwell's compendious paragraph on this subject, in his sketch of
Faraday, in the Encyclopedia Britannica. It may be said that no one in
all the nineteenth century was more capable of appreciating properly the
value of Faraday's work than this great electrical mathematician, who
laid the firm foundation of mathematical electricity during the latter
part of the nineteenth century. Clerk Maxwell says:
"This was of course a great triumph, and nobody appreciated this fact
better than Faraday himself, who had been working at its problems for
many years. One of the first problems that he had set himself in his
note-book as a young man, was 'to convert magnetism into electricity,'
and this he had now done. Within a month of the time that his first
successful experiment was formed, he succeeded in obtaining induction
currents by means of the earth's magnetism. Within a year he took the
further immense step of obtaining a spark from the induced current. This
would ordinarily have seemed quite impossible, since sparks occur only
if the electromotive force is very high, and it was very low in his
induced currents. He found, however, that if the circuit of wire in
which a current was flowing is broken while the current is passing, a
little bridge of metallic vapor is formed, across which the spark leaps.
The difficulty with the experiment was to break the circuit during the
extremely short period while the current is flowing. Faraday succeeded
in doing this, and as a result obtained the first germ of the electric
light. When he demonstrated this experiment by a very ingenious
apparatus at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, all were
deeply interested, yet probably no one, even the most sanguine of the
scientists present, thought for a moment that they saw the beginning of
a far-reaching revolution of all the lighting of the world."
Perhaps the most interesting of Faraday's discoveries, from the
scientific standpoint, because they throw so much light on the problems
of all the related phenomena of magnetism, heat, light, even
electricity, were those in which a ray of polarized light was used as a
means of investigating the condition of transparent bodies when acted on
by electric and magnetic forces. Faraday himself, when he was just
thirty years of age, made a note in his commonplace laboratory book, in
which all his observations were carefully detailed, that serves to show
how much this subject had begun to interest him thus early in his
career. He mentions that he had polarized a ray of lamp-light by
reflection, and had made various experiments to ascertain whether any
depolarizing action was exerted on it by water placed between the poles
of a voltaic battery in a glass cistern, or by various fluids which were
decomposed by the voltaic action during the course of the experiment.
Besides water, the fluids used were weak solutions of sulphate of soda
and strong sulphuric acid. None of them had any effect on the polarized
light, either during the passage of the voltaic current or when this was
shut off. No particular arrangement of particles in reference to
polarized light could be found from these observations.
Such a note, with utter failure for conclusion, is common enough in
Faraday's note-book. He was never discouraged, however, by failure at
the beginning. Once a subject has been taken up seriously, it is almost
inevitable that further observations with regard to it will be found
during the course of the year. Because he had asked one question of
nature and had not obtained a satisfactory answer, was never a reason
why he should not ask further questions along the same line; and, above
all, why he should not ask the same question in another way. After
having tried a continuous current, Faraday next experimented on the
effect of making and breaking the circuit. He did not expect very much
from this, but he hoped that under circumstances when no decomposition
would ensue as the effect of the current, he might find some indication
of the polarization. It was nearly twenty-five years before Faraday
succeeded in solving the problem that he had thus set himself as a young
man, and nearly twenty years more were to pass before he made the
relation between magnetism and light the subject of his very last
experimental work. Nothing discouraged him. When he had resolved to
investigate something, he continued to make his experiments over and
over again in different ways, until finally he got an answer to his
question and a solution to the problem.
Indeed, his perseverance in anything that he undertook was a striking
characteristic of the man and one of the most important elements in his
success in life. His tenacity of purpose showed itself equally in little
as in great things. Arranging some apparatus one day with a
philosophical instrument-maker, he let fall on the floor a small piece
of glass. He made several ineffectual attempts to pick it up. "Never
mind," said his companion, "it is not worth the trouble." "Well, but,
Murray, I don't like to be beaten by something that I have once tried to
do."
Faraday was sure that there was some very definite relation between
electricity and light. His experiments, however, did not enable him to
demonstrate this until nearly fifteen years after his successful
experiment on induction. In September, 1845, he placed a piece of heavy
glass made of silico-borate of lead in the field of a magnet, and found
that, when a beam of polarized light was transmitted through the glass
in the direction of the lines of force, there was a rotation of the
plane of polarization. Later experiments showed him that all transparent
solids and liquids were capable of producing this rotation in greater or
less degree. When no magnet was used and the transparent substance was
placed within a coil of wire through which an electric current was
flowing, similar effects were produced. This was the demonstration of a
definite relation between light and electricity. Later, Faraday found
that magnets had a directive action upon the glass. He then made
experiments upon gases, and found that they too exhibited magnetic
phenomena, and that, indeed, the diurnal variations of the
compass-needle were due to the sun's heat diminishing the magnetic
permeability of the oxygen of the air. Further experiments with gases
showed him that nitrogen was absolutely neutral in its reaction.
It might have been expected, from Faraday's early interest in chemistry,
that when he turned to electricity and made discoveries in that field of
research, he would naturally take up the problem of tracing the laws and
demonstrating the relationships of the points of contact of the two
great sciences. After his completion, then, of the subject of induction,
Faraday devoted himself to the experimental proof of the identity of
frictional and voltaic electricity, and to showing that chemistry and
physics have a common ground. His inductive electrical machine could
deflect a magnet and decompose iodide of potash. With his tendency to
measure things, he determined that the amount of electricity required to
decompose a grain of water was equal to 800,000 charges of his large
battery of Leyden jars. On the other hand, the current from a frictional
machine deflected the needle of his galvanometer in the same way as the
induced current of electricity, so that all the elements of the proof of
the identity of the two forms of phenomena were now in his hands.
That he should have proceeded to the demonstration of the laws of
electrolysis, was the next most natural result. He showed that the
amount of any compound decomposed by the electric current is exactly
proportional to the whole quantity of electricity which has passed
through the electrolyte. Different substances are variously refractory
to dissolution under the influence of the electric current, but each one
always acts in the same way and requires the same amount of current.
Substances that are closely related to one another chemically, are also
related to one another in the amount of electricity required to bring
about decomposition of their various compounds. He showed, of course,
that there are differences of electrical relationship that make the
results produced in the decomposition of various compounds very
different. Polarization, for instance, sets in to a much greater degree
in the decomposition of some substances than of others. One consequence
is that the resistance to the passage of the electric current differs
markedly, and the opposing electromotive force will stop the current or
hamper its effects in many cases, so that, until after actual
experiment, the quantitative effect of the passage of the electric
current through a solution cannot be determined.
Faraday's opinions as to the significance of electricity in the animal
economy are very interesting because of his profound knowledge of
electrical phenomena and their place in nature. It is all the more
interesting because it is so simple, and most scientists would be apt to
say that its very simplicity is a very taking argument for its truth.
"As living creatures produce heat, and a heat certainly identical with
that of our hearths, why should they not produce electricity also, and
an electricity in like manner identical with that of our machines? Like
heat, like chemical action, electricity is an implement of life, and
nothing more."
While Faraday often occupied himself with subjects connected with matter
and force that are likely to remain mysteries for long after his time,
and often had thoughts to express with regard to the nature of atoms and
of imponderable agents, whatever he had to say about these subjects was
not vague and speculative, but, on the contrary, was concrete and
usually of such a practical character as to add something new to our
knowledge of them. Few men have ever succeeded in getting closer to the
mysteries that underlie natural phenomena than Faraday; yet no one was
ever less carried away into vague theoretic speculations with regard to
them, nor tempted to think that because he knew much more than most
other men with regard to complex natural problems, that therefore he
knew enough to be able to solve the mysteries that existed all around
him. He had none at all of what would ordinarily be called pride of
intellect, but, on the contrary, had the humility of the true scientist.
Knowing so much only made him realize more poignantly how much he was
ignorant of. With regard to his speculations on matter and force and the
imponderables, Helmholtz, the great German physicist, once summed up
Faraday's contributions very succinctly in a way to show the practical
nature of Faraday's intellect. He said:
"It is these things that Faraday in his mature works ever seeks to
purify more and more from everything that is theoretical and is not the
direct and simple expression of the fact. For instance, he contended
against the action of forces at a distance, and the adoption of two
electrical and two magnetic fluids, as well as all hypotheses contrary
to the law of the conservation of force, which he early foresaw, though
he misunderstood it in its scientific expression. And it is just in
this direction that he exercised the most unmistakable influence, first
of all, on the English physicist, and then on the physicists of all the
world."
Inventors and promoters of useful inventions, frequently benefited by
the advice of Faraday or by his general help. A remarkable instance of
this was told by Mr. Cyrus W. Field. At the commencement of his great
enterprise, when he wished to unite the Old and the New World by the
telegraphic cable, he sought the advice of the great electrician, and
Faraday told him that he doubted the possibility of getting a message
across the Atlantic. Mr. Field saw that this fatal objection must be
settled at once, and begged Faraday to make the necessary experiments,
offering to pay him properly for his services. The philosopher, however,
declined all remuneration, but worked away at the question, and
presently reported to Mr. Field: "It can be done; but you will not get
an instantaneous message." "How long will it take?" was the inquiry.
"Oh! perhaps a second." "Well, that's quick enough for me," was the
conclusion of the American; and the enterprise was proceeded with.
Faraday was far from being a mere laboratory student; he was much more
even than a great teacher of physics. He was a magnificent popular
lecturer, and did an incalculable amount to bring physics to the
attention and the serious interest of his generation. A contemporary has
described one of his lectures at the Royal Institution in such a way as
to give us some idea, even at this distant date, of Faraday's power over
his audience, of his own wonderful interest in the subject and his
marvelous ability to communicate that interest to others. It was of the
very nature of the man that he should not be cold and formal, for he was
not a man of the head alone, but, above all, a man whose heart and
affections were greatly developed, and he had powers of enthusiasm that
placed him high among the artistic spirits of mankind. Our American
poet, Stedman, once declared that the intellectual quality of the poet,
the creator in the realm of thought, and of the scientist, the original
worker in the domain of science, differed but little from one another,
and must be considered as collateral expressions of the same form of
intellectual genius. With this in mind, his contemporary's enthusiastic
description of his lectures will not seem overdrawn.
"It was an irresistible eloquence, which compelled attention and
insisted upon sympathy. It waked the young from their visions, and the
old from their dreams. There was a gleaming in his eyes which no painter
could copy, and which no poet could describe. Their radiance seemed to
send a strange light into the very heart of his congregation; and when
he spoke, it was felt that the stir of his voice and the fervor of his
words could belong only to the owner of those kindling eyes. His thought
was rapid, and made itself a way in new phrases, if it found none ready
made, as the mountaineer cuts steps in the most hazardous ascent with
his own axe. His enthusiasm sometimes carried him to the point of
ecstasy."
Faraday's habit of testing opinions by experiment, and the frequent
disillusions which he encountered with regard to things of which he
thought he knew something definite, served to make him extremely
careful as regards expressions of opinion. Some of his thoughts on this
subject are worth while recalling because they remain perennially true,
and anyone in any generation will find that, as his experience grows, he
gets more and more into this Faraday mood of doubting his own opinion
and listening with more readiness to that of others. As a rule, this is
said not to be true of those who are in advancing years, but the greater
minds among the older men do not get set in their ways. Flourens might
have said that because of constant exercise the connective tissue in the
brains of such men does not form to the same extent as in others, and
does not make them case-hardened. As a consequence, they retain far on
in years their sympathy for others' opinions and their openness of mind.
Comparatively, they are so few, however, that this expression of
Faraday's becomes a striking commentary on his large-mindedness.
"For proper self-education, it is necessary that a man examine himself,
and that not carelessly either.... A first result of this habit of mind
will be an internal conviction of ignorance in many things respecting
which his neighbors are taught, and that his opinions and conclusions on
such matters ought to be advanced with reservation. A mind so
disciplined will be open to correction upon good grounds in all things,
even in those it is best acquainted with, and should familiarize itself
with the idea of such being the case."
Perhaps it is even more interesting, because more humanly sympathetic,
to find that Faraday distrusted his opinions of people even more than
his opinions of things, and that he himself tried to be very slow to
take offence at what was said to him, and counselled greatest discretion
to others in judging of the significance of supposed slights.
"Let me, as an old man who ought by this time to have profited by
experience, say that when I was younger, I found I often misinterpreted
the intentions of people, and found that they did not mean what at the
time I supposed they meant; and further, that, as a general rule, it was
better to be a little dull of apprehension when phrases seemed to imply
pique and quick in perception, when, on the contrary, they seemed to
imply kindly feeling. The real truth never fails ultimately to appear,
and opposing parties, if wrong, are sooner convinced when replied to
forbearingly than when overwhelmed."
Few lives have been happier than that of Faraday. He gave up the
ordinary ambition of men to make what is called a successful career of
money-making, and constantly guarded himself from slipping back, as so
many do, to the ruin of their original purpose. He lived a long life in
peace, occupied with work that he liked above all things, and surely
serves as the best illustration of the maxim: "Blessed is the man who
has found his work." Work is said to be one of the primal curses laid
upon man; but if, when the Creator would ban it turns to blessing in the
way that work has done, then may one well ask what will His blessings
prove. Faraday even had what is rarer in life than happiness, the
consciousness of his happiness. Usually it is so elusive that it escapes
reflection. At the close of his career, when he wrote, in 1861, to the
managers of the Royal Institution resigning most of his duties, he
expressed this feeling very beautifully, and at the same time so simply
and clearly as to make his letter of resignation a precious bit of
literature.
"I entered the Royal Institution in March, 1813, nearly forty-nine years
ago, and, with the exception of a comparatively short period, during
which I was abroad on the continent with Sir H. Davy, I have been with
you ever since. During that time I have been most happy in your
kindness, and in the fostering care which the Royal Institution has
bestowed upon me. Thank God, first, for all His gifts! I have next to
thank you and your predecessors for the unswerving encouragement and
support which you have given me during that period. My life has been a
happy one, and all I desired. During its progress, I have tried to make
a fitting return for it to the Royal Institution, and through it to
science. But the progress of years (now amounting in number to
three-score and ten) having brought forth, first, the period of
development, and then that of maturity, has ultimately produced for me
that of gentle decay. This has taken place in such a manner as to make
the evening of life a blessing; for, while increasing physical weakness
occurs, a full share of health, free from pain, is granted with it; and
while memory and certain other faculties of the mind diminish, my good
spirits and cheerfulness do not diminish with them."
For nearly five years after he had given up to a great degree his work
at the Royal Institution, he faced death, not with the equanimity of the
stoic, but with the peaceful happiness of the believer in Providence and
a hereafter. Even the loss of his memory, dear as it must have been to a
man who had spent all his life in storing it with the great facts of
science, does not seem seriously to have disturbed him. He realized the
necessity for patience, and took the lesson of its necessity to heart,
so that there was no difficulty in it. Once when calling on his friend,
the distinguished scientist, Barlow, who had for a lifetime almost
worked beside him at the Royal Institution, but who was now suffering
from paralysis, he said: "Barlow, you and I are waiting; that is what we
have to do now; and we must try to do it patiently." When the full
realization that his powers were leaving him first came to him, he wrote
to his niece what he thought ought to be the feelings of the believer in
Providence toward death, and his letter shows how thoroughly he had
imbibed the great lessons of Christianity, and how much of consolation
his faith was to him in this darkest hour before the dawn of that other
life, in which he had as implicit confidence as in any of the great
scientific principles that he had demonstrated by experiment. He wrote:
"I cannot think that death has, to the Christian, anything in it that
should make it a rare, or other than a constant thought. Out of the
thought of death comes the view of the life beyond the grave, as out of
the view of sin (that true and real view which the Holy Spirit alone can
give to man) comes the glorious Hope.... My worldly faculties are
slipping away day by day. Happy is it for all of us, that the true good
lies not in them. As they ebb, may they leave us as little children,
trusting in the Father of Mercies and accepting His unspeakable gift."
And when the dark shadow was creeping over him, he wrote to the Comte de
Paris: "I bow before Him who is the Lord of all, and hope to be kept
waiting patiently for His time and mode of releasing me, according to
His divine word and the great and precious promises whereby His people
are made partakers of the divine nature."
Probably the feature of the careers of Darwin and Spencer which are
saddest for their adherents, and which made those who refused to be
recognized as among their followers appreciate their one-sidedness, is
the confession by both of them, that they had lost their interest in
poetry and even in literature of all kinds, and toward the end of their
lives particularly lost entirely their appreciation of things artistic.
As might be expected from what we know of Faraday, this was not at all
the case with him; but, on the contrary, down to the end of his life, he
retained all his youthful admiration for the poets. His niece tells the
story of hearing him often read poetry, and of how much he used to be
affected by his favorite poems. In one of her letters she says:
"But of all things, I used to like to hear him read 'Childe Harold'; and
never shall I forget the way in which he read the description of the
storm on Lake Leman. He took great pleasure in Bryon, and Coleridge's
'Hymn to Mont Blanc' delighted him. When anything touched his feelings
as he read--and it happened not infrequently--he would show it not only
in his voice, but by tears in his eyes also."
As a young man, he was so completely taken up with the scientific
studies that he could not think that he would ever find time for the
ordinary interests of life. Especially was this true with regard to the
question of marriage. He felt that he would never marry, and he seems
rather to have pitied those, the weakness of whose nature pushed them on
to assume many duties in life and look for merely selfish happiness. It
was as a very young man that he wrote:
"What is't that comes in false, deceitful guise,
Making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise?
'Tis Love."
When the time came, however, he altered this opinion. Among the elders
of the Church which he attended in London was a Mr. Barnard, a
silversmith. Faraday occasionally spent an evening at his house, and
incidentally met his daughter Sarah. He had not met her many times
before his ideas as to what love might mean in life were completely
changed, and not long after making her acquaintance he wrote her a
letter, in which he recants and asks her to be more than a friend. His
letter is rather interesting as love letters go.
"You know me as well or better than I do myself. You know my former
prejudices and my present thoughts; you know my weaknesses, my vanity,
my whole mind; you have converted me from one erroneous way; let me hope
that you will attempt to correct what others are wrong.... Again and
again I attempt to say what I feel, but I cannot. Let me, however, claim
not to be the selfish being that wishes to bend his affections for his
own sake only. In whatever way I can best minister to your happiness,
either by assiduity or by absence, it shall be done. Do not injure me by
withdrawing your friendship, or punish me for aiming to be more than a
friend by making me less; and if you cannot grant me more, leave me what
I possess but hear me."
In spite of the sincere feeling of this letter, the lady hesitated. For
a time she left London, apparently in order to give herself a breathing
spell from the ardor of his suit. In spite of his deep interest in
science, Faraday followed her to the seacoast, and after they had
wandered together for several days at Margate and Dover, where
Shakespeare's Cliff Was an especial haunt of theirs, the lady relented.
Faraday returned to London bubbling over with happiness. He was not
quite thirty when they were married, and at the time his salary did not
amount to more than a thousand dollars a year. It was distinctly not a
marriage of reason.
Most of the happiness of his life came to him from his marriage. Many
years afterward, he called it "An event which, more than any other,
contributed to my happiness and healthful state of mind." With years,
this feeling only deepened and strengthened. In the midst of his
scientific triumphs, his first thought was always of her. When his
attendance at scientific congresses took him away from her, his letters
were frequent, and always expressive of his longing to be with her. One
of his biographers has said "that doubtless at any time between their
marriage and his final illness, he might have written to her as he did
from Birmingham, at the time of the meeting of the British Association
there."
"After all, there is no pleasure like the tranquil pleasure of home; and
here, the moment I leave the table, I wish I were with you _in quiet_.
Oh! what happiness is ours! My runs into the world in this way only
serve to make me esteem that happiness the more."
Faraday had probably lost more illusions than most men, and came to the
true appreciation of things as they are. In spite of his life-long
study, he had no illusions with regard to the education of the intellect
merely, or the possession of superior intellectual faculties as moral
factors. His keen observation of men had made any such mistake as that
impossible. On the other hand, he had often noted that the ignorant, or
at least those lacking education, were very admirable in conduct and in
principle, and so we have his suggestive testimony:
"I should be glad to think that high mental powers insured something
like a high moral sense, but have often been grieved to see the
contrary; as also, on the other hand, my spirit has been cheered by
observing in some lowly and uninstructed creature such a healthful and
honorable and dignified mind as made one in love with human nature. When
that which is good mentally and morally meet in one being, that that
being is more fitted to work out and manifest the glory of God in the
creation, I fully admit."
Faraday's very definite expression of what he considers must be the
position of the man of science with regard to a hereafter and the
existence of God, is worth while recalling here, because it was such a
modest yet forceful presentation of the attitude of mind that every
thinking modern scientist must occupy in this matter, the attitude which
all of Faraday's great fellow-workers in the domain of electricity also
occupy. It is indeed the position that has been assumed by all the great
scientists who bowed humbly to faith, though so many lesser lights have
found this apparently impossible. At a lecture given in 1854 at the
Royal Institution, Faraday said: "High as man is placed above the
creatures around him, there is a higher and far more exalted position
within his view; and the ways are infinite in which he occupies his
thoughts about the fears, or hopes, or expectations of a future life. I
believe that the truth of that future cannot be brought to his
knowledge by any exertion of his mental powers, however exalted they may
be; that it is made known to him by other teaching than his own, and is
received through simple belief of the testimony given.... Yet even in
earthly matters, I believe that 'the invisible things of Him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things
that are made, even His eternal power and godhead'; and I have never
seen anything incompatible between those things of man which can be
known by the spirit of man which is within him, and those higher things
concerning his future which he cannot know by that spirit."
Elsewhere he had said: "When I consider the multitude of associate
forces which are diffused through nature; when I think of that calm and
tranquil balancing of their energies which enables elements, most
powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and
economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the
wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever
impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur beyond our
language to express, of the Great Disposer of all!"
Dr. Gladstone, in his Life of Faraday, which we have so often put into
requisition, has given in one striking paragraph a description of the
passing of Faraday, that in its simplicity is worthy of the great man
whom it so well represents. It is so different from what is ordinarily
supposed to be the attitude of the scientist towards death, that when by
contrast we recall that Faraday is acknowledged to be the greatest
experimental scientist of the nineteenth century, the man of his
generation most honored by scientific societies at home and abroad--his
honorary memberships numbered nearly one hundred--it must be considered
as a very curious contradiction of what is the usual impression in this
matter: "When his faculties were fading fast, he would sit long at the
western window, watching the glories of the sunset; and one day, when
his wife drew his attention to a beautiful rainbow that then spanned the
sky, he looked beyond the falling shower and the many-colored arch and
observed, 'He hath set His testimony in the heavens.' On August 25th,
1867, quietly, almost imperceptibly, came the release. There was a
philosopher less on earth, and a saint more in heaven."
When we come to the end of the life of this greatest of
experimentalists, the most striking remembrance is that of the supreme
original genius of this great discoverer in electricity, whose work was
such a stimulus to others, whose conclusions were to prove the basis for
so much of the work of his contemporaries and his successors in
electrical investigation, and whose place in the world of science is
assured beside such men as Newton and Kepler and Harvey and the other
great pioneers in science. There is no doubt at all, however, that our
heartiest feelings are aroused by the picture of the wonderfully rounded
existence of the great scientist, his pervasive humanity, his largeness
of soul and sympathy, his understanding of men in their ways through his
own complete knowledge of himself, that is so strikingly displayed. We
feel sure that Faraday himself would have cared less for his fame as a
great scientist than for the summary of his life which has been given us
by his friend, Bence Jones, who said: "His was a life-long strife, to
seek and say that which he thought was true and to do that which he
thought was kind."
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Some of the books bound by Faraday at this time are still
preserved in the library of the Royal Institution, together with his
notes on various courses of lectures, some of which are mentioned more
particularly later on in this sketch, as they were also bound by him.
Among the manuscripts in the collection are letters from many of the
important scientific scientists of Europe.
[30] Makers of Modern Medicine, Fordham University Press, N.
Y., 1907.