Michael Faraday, His Life and Work quotes

I said he was the best bookworm for eating his way to the inside; for hundreds had worked at books only as so much printed paper.

Faraday saw a mine of knowledge, and resolved to explore it.

” To one of his friends he said that a book by Watts, “On the Mind,” first made him think, and that the article on “Electricity” in a cyclopædia which came into his hands to be bound first turned his attention to science.

“If I am unfit for it,” he says, “’tis evident that I have yet to learn; and how learn better than by the observation of others?

If we never judge at all, we shall never judge right.

” “I, too, have inducements in the C[ity] P[hilosophical] S[ociety] to draw me forward in the acquisition of a small portion of knowledge on this point.”

he had never, to his own recollection, even seen the sea. When on Wednesday, October 13, he started out on the journey to Plymouth, in order to cross to the port of Morlaix, he began his journal of foreign travel thus:—

This morning formed a new epoch in my life.

I have never before, within my recollection, left London at a greater distance than twelve miles.

This morning formed a new epoch in my life.

I have never before, within my recollection, left London at a greater distance than twelve miles.

This journal he kept with minute care, with the sole purpose of recalling events to his mind. It gives full details as to Davy’s scientific friends and work, intermingled with graphic descriptions of scenery; and is remarkable also for its personal reticence.

At Montpellier, beside the hospitable hearth of Bérard, the associate of Chaptal, doyen of our corresponding members, Faraday has left memories equally charged with an undying sympathy which his master could never have inspired.

We admired Davy, we loved Faraday.

It is December 29 when the travellers leave Paris and cross the forest of Fontainebleau. Faraday thinks he never saw a more beautiful scene than the forest dressed in an airy garment of crystalline hoar frost.

but second thoughts have still induced me to try what the future may produce, and now I am only retained by the wish of improvement.

I have learned just enough to perceive my ignorance, and, ashamed of my defects in everything, I wish to seize the opportunity of remedying them.

The little knowledge I have gained in languages makes me wish to know more of them, and the little I have seen of men and manners is just enough to make me desirous of seeing more;

He also kept a commonplace book filled with notes of scientific matters, with literary excerpts, anagrams, epitaphs, algebraic puzzles, varieties of spelling of his own name, and personal experiences, including a poetical diatribe against falling in love, together with the following more prosaic aphorism:—

What is Love?—A nuisance to everybody but the parties concerned. A private affair which every one but those concerned wishes to make public.

It also includes a piece in verse, by a member of the City Philosophical Society—a Mr. Dryden—called “Quarterly Night,” which is interesting as embalming a portrait of the youthful Faraday as he appeared to his comrades:—

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 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 your 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.

Let me, however, claim not to be the selfish being that wishes to bend your 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.

Sarah Barnard showed the letter to her father. She was young, and feared to accept her lover. All her father would say by way of counsel was that love made philosophers say many foolish things.

This volume he called “Chemical Notes, Hints, Suggestions, and Objects of Pursuit.” It contains many of the germs of his own future discoveries, as the following examples show:—

Convert magnetism into electricity.

Do pith balls diverge by disturbance of electricities in consequence of induction or not?

Faraday was firmly persuaded that, great as had been these discoveries of the production of magnetism and magnetic motions from electricity, there remained other relations of no less importance to be discovered. Again and again his mind recurred to the subject.

If it were possible to use electricity to produce magnetism, why should not the converse be true?

In 1822 his notebook suggestion was, as we have seen, “Convert magnetism into electricity.” Yes, but how?

In November, 1825, he sought for evidence that might prove an electric current in a wire to exercise an influence upon a neighbouring wire connected to a galvanometer. But again, and yet again in December of the same year, the entry stands “No result.”

A third failure did not convince him that the search was hopeless: it showed him that he had not yet found the right method of experimenting.

It is narrated of him how at this period he used to carry in his waistcoat pocket a small model of an electromagnetic circuit—a straight iron core about an inch long, surrounded by a few spiral turns of copper wire—which model he at spare moments …

I do so now very heartily. I shall detain this letter a few days that I may send a couple of my papers (i.e. a paper and appendix) with it, for though not chemical I think you will like to have them.

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 labour I may at last pull up.

I think I know why metals are magnetic when in motion though not (generally) when at rest.

The second section shows that Faraday had discovered the cause of all the previous failures to evoke electric currents in wires by means of a magnet: it required relative motion.

What the magnet at rest fails to do, the magnet in motion accomplishes.

This crucial point is admirably commemorated in the following impromptu given by Mr. Herbert Mayo to Sir Charles Wheatstone:—

The description of these new electrical machines is concluded with the following pregnant words:—

I have rather, however, been desirous of discovering new facts and relations dependent on magneto-electric induction, than of exalting the force of those already obtained; being assured that the latter would find their full development hereafter.

In yet another machine (Fig.

it must, in other words, be a conductor of electricity. The higher the conducting power, the more copious were the currents. He now passes from his little brass globe to the globe of the earth.

He plays like a magician with the earth’s magnetism.

He sees the invisible lines along which its magnetic action is exerted, and, sweeping his wand across these lines, he evokes this new power. Placing a simple loop of wire round a magnetic needle, he bends its upper portion to the west;

The conclusion was that there is no philosophical difference between the different cases; since the phenomena produced by the different kinds of electricity differ not in their character but only in degree. “

Electricity, whatever may be its source, is identical in its nature.

” On comparing the effects produced by different discharges, he concludes that “if the same absolute quantity41 of electricity pass through the galvanometer, whatever may be its intensity, the deflecting force upon the magnetic needle is the same.”

And then again occur, I confess, dark sayings, difficult to be understood, which disturb my confidence in this conclusion.

It must, however, always be remembered that he works at the very boundaries of our knowledge, and that his mind habitually dwells in the “boundless contiguity of shade” by which that knowledge is surrounded.

In the researches now under review the ratio of speculation and reasoning to experiment is far higher than in any of Faraday’s previous works.

During the period of enforced rest, from 1839 to 1844, these ideas had been ever with him.

His was a mind which during times of quiet brooding did not cease to advance.

In silence his thoughts arranged themselves in readiness for the next period of activity, and his work, when it began again, was all the more fruitful for the antecedent period of cogitation.

After writing, I walk out in the evening, hand-in-hand with my dear wife, to enjoy the sunset; for to me, who love scenery, of all that I have seen or can see there is none surpasses that of Heaven.

A glorious sunset brings with it a thousand thoughts that delight me.

To De la Rive he wrote later as follows:—

To this matter we may well apply Faraday’s own words addressed to Tyndall respecting the alleged diamagnetic polarity, and the conflict of views between himself on the one hand and Weber and Tyndall on the other:—“

It is not wonderful that views differ at first. Time will gradually sift and shape them.

And I believe that we have little idea at present of the importance they may have ten or twenty years hence.”

It is the occasional and more frequent use of the latter which I at present wish to advocate....

When the natural truth, and the conventional representation of it, most closely agree, then are we most advanced in our knowledge.

The emission and æther theories present such cases in relation to light. The idea of a fluid or of two fluids is the same for electricity;

At Interlaken, observing that clout-nail-making was practised as a local industry, he wrote: “

I love a smith’s shop and everything relating to smithery. My father was a smith.

”

There were those who feared as well as those who loved and admired him. Dr. Gladstone says of him that he was no “model of all the virtues,” dreadfully uninteresting, and discouraging to those who feel calm perfection out of their reach. “

His inner life was a battle, with its wounds as well as its victory.

” “It is true also,” he adds, “that with his great caution and his repugnance to moral evil, he was more disposed to turn away in disgust from an erring companion than to endeavour to reclaim him.”

As no man could achieve and retain such a position without possessing both natural gifts and appropriate training, it is fitting to inquire what were those gifts and what the training which were so happily united in him.

I was (he said) a very lively, imaginative person, and could believe in the Arabian Nights as easily as in the Encyclopædia; but facts were important to me, and saved me. I could trust a fact, and always cross-examined an assertion.

From the very first Faraday had an appreciation of the way in which public lectures should be given. In his notes of Davy’s fourth lecture of April, 1812, he wrote:—

He should endeavour to raise their interest at the commencement of the lecture, and by a series of imperceptible gradations, unnoticed by the company, keep it alive as long as the subject demands it.

A flame should be lighted at the commencement, and kept alive with unremitting splendour to the end.

For this reason I very much disapprove of breaks in a lecture, and where they can by any means be avoided they should on no account find place.... For the same reason—namely, that the audience should not grow tired—I disapprove of long lectures;

For the same reason—namely, that the audience should not grow tired—I disapprove of long lectures; one hour is long enough for anyone. Nor should they be allowed to exceed that time.

A lecturer falls deeply beneath the dignity of his character when he descends so low as to angle for claps and asks for commendation.

Yet have I seen a lecturer even at this point. I have heard him causelessly condemn his own powers. I have heard him dwell for a length of time on the extreme care and niceness that the experiment he will make requires.

If at a loss for a word, not to ch-ch-ch or eh-eh-eh, but to stop and wait for it. It soon comes, and the bad habits are broken and fluency soon acquired.

Never doubt a correction given to me by another.

His niece, Miss Reid, who lived from 1830 to 1840 at the Institution with the Faradays, gave the following amongst her recollections:—

To a young lecturer he once remarked: ‘If I said to my audience, “This stone will fall to the ground if I open my hand,” I should open my hand and let it fall.

Take nothing for granted as known; inform the eye at the same time as you address the ear.

’ He always endeavoured at the outset to put himself en rapport with his audience by introducing his subject on its most familiar side, and then leading on to that which was less familiar.

And then I do not desire to give time to them, for money is no temptation to me.

In fact, I have always loved science more than money; and because my occupation is almost entirely personal I cannot afford to get rich.

Again thanking you and Mr. Bentley, I remain,

Quick feelings, quick movement, quick thought, vividness of expression and of perception, belonged to him.

He came across you like a flash of light, and he seemed to leave some of his light with you.

His presence was always stimulating.—St. Paul’s Magazine, June, 1870.

I see no objection to evening lectures if you can find a fit man to give them. As to popular lectures (which at the same time are to be respectable and sound), none are more difficult to find.

Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.

They know little of the matter who think science is more easily to be taught or learned than A B C; and yet who ever learned his A B C without pain and trouble?

but they helped his audience quite as much as they aided him. Reference was made on p. 7 to his use of cards, on which to jot down notes of thoughts that occurred to him. One such runs as follows:—

Remember to do one thing at once.

Also to finish a thing. Also to do a little if I could not do much.

Influence of authority. Davy and difficulty of steering between self-sufficiency and dependance (sic) on others.

Aim at high things, but not presumptuously.

Endeavour to succeed—expect not to succeed.

Aim at high things, but not presumptuously.

Endeavour to succeed—expect not to succeed.

Criticise one’s own view in every way by experiment—if possible, leave no objection to be put by others.

Endeavour to succeed—expect not to succeed.

Criticise one’s own view in every way by experiment—if possible, leave no objection to be put by others.

Faraday’s enthusiasm about experimental researches was at times unrestrained, and always contagious. Dumas describes how Faraday repeated for him the experimental demonstration of the action of magnetism on light.

To the Baroness Burdett-Coutts he once wrote inviting her to see some experiments upon spectrum analysis in his private room.

The experiments, he wrote, will not be beautiful except to the intelligent.

Yet another reminiscence is to be found in the Memorials of Joseph Henry. It relates, probably, to the date of 1837, when Henry visited Europe.

Faraday’s mind was of a very individual turn; he could not walk along the beaten tracks, but must pursue truth wherever it led him.

His dogged tenacity for exact fact was accompanied by a perfect fearlessness of speculation.

He would throw overboard without hesitation the most deeply-rooted notions if experimental evidence pointed to newer ideas. He had learned to doubt the idea of poles; so he outgrew the idea of atoms, which he considered an arbitrary conception.

so he outgrew the idea of atoms, which he considered an arbitrary conception. Many who heard his bold speculations and his free coinage of new terms deemed him vague and loose in thought. Nothing could be more untrue.

He let his mind play freely about the facts; he framed thousands of hypotheses, only to let them go by if they were not supported by facts.

“He is the wisest philosopher,” he said in a lecture on the nature of matter, “who holds his theory with some doubt—who is able to proportion his judgment and confidence to the value of the evidence set before him, taking a fact for a fact …

… except in turning the tables upon the table-turners, nor should I have done that, but that so many inquiries poured in upon me, that I thought it better to stop the inpouring flood by letting all know at once what my views and thoughts were.

What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man.

How full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities it is.

He declined an invitation in 1855 to see manifestations by the medium Home, saying that he had “lost too much time about such matters already.” Nine years later the Brothers Davenport invited him to witness their cabinet “manifestations.” Again he declined, and added: “

I will leave the spirits to find out for themselves how they can move my attention. I am tired of them.

”

With increasing age the infirmity of loss of memory made itself increasingly felt. He alludes frequently to this in his letters. To one friend who upbraided him gently for not having replied to a letter he says: “

Do you remember that I forget?

” To another he says he is forgetting how to spell such words as “withhold” and “successful.”

My head is full, and my heart also, but my recollection rapidly fails, even as regards the friends that are in the room with me.

You will have to resume your old function of being a pillow to my mind, and a rest, a happy-making wife.

My love to my dear Mary. I expect to find you together, but do not assume to know how things may be.

“It is wonderful,” he says, “how much good results from different persons working at the same matter. Each one gives views and ideas new to the rest.

When science is a republic, then it gains; and though I am no republican in other matters, I am in that.

” Other causes there were, doubtless, tending to his isolation, amongst them an old jealousy, now long dead, against the Royal Institution on the part of some of the Fellows of the Royal Society. Above all, probably, was his detestation of controversy.

Such cases have seemed to me almost the only ones for which it is worth while entering into controversy.”... “

These polemics of the scientific world are very unfortunate things; they form the great stain to which the beautiful edifice of scientific truth is subject. Are they inevitable?

”

and I am sorry when that is not the effect in every part of their course.... The real truth never fails ultimately to appear....

It is better to be blind to the results of partisanship, and quick to see good will. One has more happiness in oneself in endeavouring to follow the things that make for peace.

You can hardly imagine how often I have been heated in private when opposed, as I have thought unjustly and superciliously, and yet I have striven, and succeeded I hope, in keeping down replies of the like kind.

… intellectual exertion, and that societies or academies, or even kings and emperors, should mingle in the matter does not remove the degradation, for the feeling which is hurt is a point above their condition, and belongs to the respect which a man owes to himself....

Still, I think rewards and honours good if properly distributed; but they should be given for what a man has done, and not offered for what he is to do.

When a friend wrote to him on hearing a rumour that he had himself been knighted, his reply, published years after in the London Review, was:

He had little sympathy with either text-book science or with mere examinations. “I have far more confidence,” he wrote, “in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it.

Nothing is so good as an experiment which, whilst it sets error right, gives an absolute advancement in knowledge.

” In another place he wrote:—“Let the imagination go, guarding it by judgment and principles, but holding it in and directing it by experiment.” For book-learned chemistry and mere chemical theory, apart from experimental facts, he had an undisguised contempt.

Nothing is so good as an experiment which, whilst it sets error right, gives an absolute advancement in knowledge.” In another place he wrote:—“

Let the imagination go, guarding it by judgment and principles, but holding it in and directing it by experiment.

” For book-learned chemistry and mere chemical theory, apart from experimental facts, he had an undisguised contempt.

All this is true of the teaching afforded by any part of physical science. Electricity is often called wonderful, beautiful; but it is so only in common with the other forces of nature.

The beauty of electricity or of any other force is not that the power is mysterious, and unexpected, touching every sense at unawares in turn, but that it is under law, and that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely.

The human mind is placed above, and not beneath it, and it is in such a point of view that the mental education afforded by science is rendered super-eminent in dignity, in practical application and utility;

I have heard mathematical physicists deplore that Faraday’s records of his labours were difficult to read and understand, that they often resembled rather abstracts from a diary. But the fault was theirs, not Faraday’s.

To physicists who have approached physics by the road of chemistry, Faraday’s memoirs sound like an admirably beautiful music.

Von Helmholtz, in his Faraday lecture of 1881, has also touched on this aspect.

He then spoke to me without hesitation or reluctance; not with any apparent desire to ‘improve the occasion,’ but to give me such information as I sought.

He believed the human heart to be swayed by a power to which science or logic opened no approach; and right or wrong, this faith, held in perfect tolerance of the faiths of others, strengthened and beautified his life.

”

Your confidence in me claims in return mine to you, which indeed I have no hesitation in giving on fitting occasions, but these I think are very few, for in my mind religious conversation is generally in vain.

There is no philosophy in my religion.

I am of a very small and despised sect of Christians, known, if known at all, as Sandemanians, and our hope is founded on the faith that is in Christ.

I have heard most of those who are considered our best readers in church and chapel, but have never heard a reader that I considered equal to Faraday.

At this distance of time his tones are always in my ears.

I was told by members of the chapel that he was most assiduous in visiting the poorer brethren and sisters at their own homes, comforting them in their sorrows and afflictions, and assisting them from his own purse.

… was continually pressed to be the guest of the high and noble (which we may well believe), but he would, if possible, decline, preferring to visit some poor sister in trouble, assist her, take a cup of tea with her, read the Bible and pray.

Though so full of religion, he was never obtrusive with it; it was too sacred a thing.

Tyndall has preserved another vivid reminiscence of Faraday’s inner life, which he wrote down after one of the earliest dinners which he had in the Royal Institution.

We dined on roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and potatoes, drank sherry, talked of research and its requirements, and of his habit of keeping himself free from the distractions of society. He was bright and joyful—boylike, in fact, though he is now sixty-two.

His work excites admiration, but contact with him warms and elevates the heart.

Here, surely, is a strong man. I love strength, but let me not forget the example of its union with modesty, tenderness, and sweetness, in the character of Faraday.”

Faraday’s mental organisation, which made it possible for him to erect an absolute barrier between his science and his religion, was an unusual one.

The human mind is seldom built in such rigid compartments that a man whose whole life is spent in analysing, testing, and weighing truths in one department of knowledge, can cut himself off from applying the same testing and inquiring processes in another department.

The founder of the sect had taught them that the Bible alone, with nothing added to it or taken away from it by man, was the only and sufficient guide for the soul.