Part 7

It has been previously remarked that Faraday took little part in social movements, and went little into society, but it must not be supposed that he was by any means unsocial. It seems probable that his freedom in this matter was somewhat hampered by the principles in which he had been brought up: it is certain that he was restrained by the desire to give all the time and energy he could to scientific research. Yet pleasant stories are told of his occasional appearances at social gatherings. Thus he liked to attend the Royal Academy dinners, and in earlier days he enjoyed the artistic and musical _conversaziones_ at Hullmandel's, where Stanfield Turner and Landseer met Garcia and Malibran; and sometimes he joined this pleasant company at supper and charades, at others in their excursions up the river in an eight-oared cutter. Captain Close has described to me how, when the French Lighthouse authorities put up the screw-pile light on the sands near Calais, they invited the Trinity House officers and Faraday to inspect it. A dinner was arranged for them after the inspection, and M. Reynaud proposed the health of the _étranger célèbre_. A young engineer took exception to Faraday being called a stranger--since he had been at St. Cyr he had known the great Englishman well by his works. The Professor replied to the compliment in the language of his hosts, with a few of his happy and kindly remarks. A gentleman high in the diplomatic service, who was present, remarked that Faraday had said many things which were not French, but not a word which ought not to be so.

More unrestricted was Faraday's sympathy with Nature. He felt the poetry of the changing seasons, but there were two aspects of Nature that especially seemed to claim communion with his spirit: he delighted in a thunderstorm, and he experienced a pleasurable sadness as the orange sunset faded into the evening twilight. There are other minds to which both these sensations are familiar, but they seem to have been felt with great intensity by him. No doubt his electrical knowledge added much to his interest in the grand discharges from the thunder-clouds, but it will hardly account for his standing long at a window watching the vivid flashes, a stranger to fear, with his mind full of lofty thoughts, or perhaps of high communings. Sometimes, too, if the storm was at a little distance, he would summon a cab, and, in spite of the pelting rain, drive to the scene of awful beauty.

On a clear starry night Captain Close quoted to him the words of Lorenzo in the "Merchant of Venice:"--

... "Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it."

Faraday, who happened not to be familiar with the passage, made his friend repeat it over and over again as he drank in the whole meaning of the poetry, for there is a true sense in which no other mortal had ever opened his ears so fully to the harmony of the universe.

* * * * *

From the plains of mental mediocrity there occasionally rise the mountains of genius, and from the dead level of selfish respectability there stand out now and then the peaks of moral greatness. Neither kind of excellence is so common as we could wish it, and it is a rare coincidence when, as in Socrates, the two meet in the same individual. In Faraday we have a modern instance. There are persons now living who watched this man of strong will and intense feelings raising himself from the lower ranks of society, yet without losing his balance; rather growing in simplicity, disinterestedness, and humility, as princes became his correspondents and all the learned bodies of the world vied with each other to do him homage; still finding his greatest happiness at home, though reigning in the affections of all his fellows,--loving every honest man, however divergent in opinion, and loved most by those who knew him best.

This is the phenomenon. By what theory is it to be accounted for?

The secret did not lie in the nature of his pursuits. This cannot be better shown than in the following incident furnished me by Mrs. Crosse:--"One morning, a few months after we were married, my husband took me to the Royal Institution to call on Mr. and Mrs. Faraday. I had not seen the laboratory there, and the philosopher very kindly took us over the Institution, explaining for my information many objects of interest. His great vivacity and cheeriness of manner surprised me in a man who devoted his life to such abstruse studies, but I have since learnt to know that the highest philosophical nature is often, indeed generally, united with an almost childlike simplicity.

"After viewing the ample appliances for experimental research, and feeling impressed by the scientific atmosphere of the place, I turned and said, 'Mr. Faraday, you must be very happy in your position and with your pursuits, which elevate you entirely out of the meaner aspects and lower aims of common life.'

"He shook his head, and with that wonderful mobility of countenance which was characteristic, his expression of joyousness changed to one of profound sadness, he replied: 'When I quitted business, and took to science as a career, I thought I had left behind me all the petty meannesses and small jealousies which hinder man in his moral progress; but I found myself raised into another sphere, only to find poor human nature just the same everywhere--subject to the same weaknesses and the same self-seeking, however exalted the intellect.'

"These were his words as well as I can recollect; and, looking at that good and great man, I thought I had never seen a countenance which so impressed me with the characteristic of perfect unworldliness. We know how his life proved that this rare qualification was indeed his."

"Childlike simplicity:" "unworldliness." Where was the tree rooted that bore such beautiful blossoms? Faraday had learnt in the school of Christ to become "a little child," and he loved not the world because the love of the Father was in him.

We have a charming glimpse of this in an extract which Professor Tyndall has given from an old paper in which he wrote his impressions after one of his earliest dinners with the philosopher:--"At two o'clock he came down for me. He, his niece, and myself formed the party. 'I never give dinners,' he said; 'I don't know how to give dinners; and I never dine out. But I should not like my friends to attribute this to a wrong cause. I act thus for the sake of securing time for work, and not through religious motives as some imagine.' He said grace. I am almost ashamed to call his prayer a 'saying' of grace. In the language of Scripture, it might be described as the petition of a son into whose heart God had sent the Spirit of His Son, and who with absolute trust asked a blessing from his father. 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."

But his religion deserves a closer attention. When an errand-boy, we find him hurrying the delivery of his newspapers on a Sunday morning so as to get home in time to make himself neat to go with his parents to chapel: his letters when abroad indicate the same disposition; yet he did not make any formal profession of his faith till a month after his marriage, when nearly thirty years of age. Of his spiritual history up to that period little is known, but there seem to be good grounds for believing that he did not accept the religion of his fathers without a conscientious inquiry into its truth. It would be difficult to conceive of his acting otherwise. But after he joined the Sandemanian Church, his questionings were probably confined to matters of practical duty; and to those who knew him best nothing could appear stronger than his conviction of the reality of the things he believed. In order to understand the life and character of Faraday, it is necessary to bear in mind not merely that he was a Christian, but that he was a Sandemanian. From his earliest years that religious system stamped its impress deeply on his mind, it surrounded the blacksmith's son with an atmosphere of unusual purity and refinement, it developed the unselfishness of his nature, and in his after career it fenced his life from the worldliness around, as well as from much that is esteemed as good by other Christian bodies. To this small self-contained sect he clung with warm attachment; he was precluded from Christian communion or work outside their circle, but his sympathies at least burst all narrow bounds. Thus the Abbé Moigno tells us that at Faraday's request he one day introduced him to Cardinal Wiseman. The interview was very cordial, and his Eminence did not hesitate frankly and good-naturedly to ask Faraday if, in his deepest conviction, he believed all the Church of Christ, holy, catholic, and apostolical, was shut up in the little sect in which he bore rule. "Oh no!" was the reply; "but I do believe from the bottom of my soul that Christ is with us." There were other points, too, in his character which reflected the colouring of the religious school to which he belonged. Thus, while humility is inseparable from a Christian life, there is a special phase of that virtue bred of those doctrines which teach that all our righteousness must be the unmerited gift of another: these doctrines are strongly insisted upon in the Sandemanian Church, and this humility was acquired in an intense degree by its minister. Again, while all Christians deplore the terrible amount of folly and sin in the world, most recognize also a large amount of good, and believe in progressive improvement; but small communities are apt to take gloomy views, and so did Faraday, notwithstanding his personal happiness, and his firm conviction that "there is One above who worketh in all things, and who governs even in the midst of that misrule to which the tendencies and powers of men are so easily perverted."

In writing to Professor Schönbein and a few other kindred spirits he would turn naturally enough from scientific to religious thoughts, and back again to natural philosophy, but he generally kept these two departments of his mental activity strangely distinct; yet of course it was well known that the Professor at Albemarle Street was one of that long line of scientific men, beginning with the _savants_ of the East, who have brought to the Redeemer the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of their adoration.

But the peculiar features of Faraday's spiritual life are matters of minor importance: the genuineness of his religious character is acknowledged by all. We have admired his faithfulness, his amiability of disposition, and his love of justice and truth; how far these qualities were natural gifts, like his clearness of intellect, we cannot precisely tell; but that he exercised constant self-control without becoming hard, ascended the pathway of fame without ever losing his balance, and shed around himself a peculiar halo of love and joyousness, must be attributed in no small degree to a heart at peace with God, and to the consciousness of a higher life.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Bacon's "Novum Organum," i. 1.

[12] Bence Jones has used the Greek agapê; and it was just this ideal of Christian love which Faraday set before himself.

[13] For this anecdote, and some others in inverted commas, I am indebted to Mr. Frank Barnard.

[14] In another letter that Lady Burdett Coutts has kindly sent me, Faraday says: "We had your box once before, I remember, for a pantomime, which is always interesting to me because of the immense concentration of means which it requires." In a third he makes admiring comments on Fechter.

SECTION III.

FRUITS OF HIS EXPERIENCE.

Those who loved Faraday would treasure every word that he wrote, and to them the life and letters which Bence Jones has given to the world will be inestimable; but from the multitude who knew him only at a distance, we can expect no enthusiasm of admiration. Yet all will readily believe that through the writings of such a genius there must be scattered nuggets of intellectual gold, even when he is not treating directly of scientific subjects. Some of these relate to questions of permanent interest, and such nuggets it is my aim to separate and lay before the reader.

When quite a young man he drew the following ideal portrait:--"The philosopher should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion, but determined to judge for himself. He should not be biassed by appearances, have no favourite hypothesis, be of no school, and in doctrine have no master. He should not be a respecter of persons, but of things. Truth should be his primary object. If to these qualities be added industry, he may indeed hope to walk within the veil of the temple of Nature." This ideal he must steadily have kept before him, and not unfrequently in after days he gave utterance to similar thoughts. Here are two instances, the first from a lecture thirty years afterwards, the second from a private letter:--"We may be _sure_ of facts, but our interpretation of facts we should doubt. He is the wisest philosopher 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, and a supposition for a supposition; as much as possible keeping his mind free from all source of prejudice, or, where he cannot do this (as in the case of a theory), remembering that such a source is there." The letter is to Mr. Frederick Field, and relates to a paper on the existence of silver in the water of the ocean.

"ROYAL INSTITUTION, _21st October, 1856_.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Your paper looks so well, that though I am of course unable to become security for the facts, I have still thought it my duty to send it to the Royal Society. Whether it will appear there or not I cannot say,--no one can say even for his own papers; but for my part, I think that as facts are the foundation of science, however they may be interpreted, so they are most valuable, and often more so than the interpretations founded upon them. I hope your further researches will confirm those you have obtained: but I would not be too hasty with them,--rather wait a while, and make them quite secure.

"I am, Sir, your obliged Servant,

"M. FARADAY."

How pleasant it would have been to peep into his mind and watch the process by which he was transformed into the very image of his ideal philosopher! He has partially told us the secret in two remarkable lectures, one of which was delivered before the City Philosophical Society when he was only twenty-seven years of age, while the other formed part of a series on Education at Albemarle Street. Copious extracts from the first are given by Dr. Bence Jones; the second was published at the time. In the early lecture, which is "On the Forms of Matter," he points out the advantages and dangers of systematizing, and winds up his remarks with--

"Nothing is more difficult and requires more care than philosophical deduction, nor is there anything more adverse to its accuracy than fixidity of opinion. The man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong, and he has the additional misfortune of inevitably remaining so. All our theories are fixed upon uncertain data, and all of them want alteration and support. Ever since the world began opinion has changed with the progress of things; and it is something more than absurd to suppose that we have a sure claim to perfection, or that we are in possession of the highest stretch of intellect which has or can result from human thought. Why our successors should not displace us in our opinions, as well as in our persons, it is difficult to say; it ever has been so, and from analogy would be supposed to continue so; and yet, with all this practical evidence of the fallibility of our opinions, all, and none more than philosophers, are ready to assert the real truth of their opinions."

In his discourse entitled "Observations on Mental Education," like a skilful physician he first determines what is the great intellectual disease from which the community suffers--"deficiency of judgment,"--and then he lays down rules by which each man may attempt his own cure. For this self-education, "it is necessary that a man examine himself, and that not carelessly.... A first result of this habit of mind will be an internal conviction of _ignorance in many things respecting which his neighbours 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.... It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles, but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous." And then he gives cases from his own mental history:--"I remember the time when I believed a spark was produced between voltaic metals as they approached to contact (and the reasons why it might be possible yet remain); but others doubted the fact and denied the proofs, and on re-examination I found reason to admit their corrections were well founded. Years ago I believed that electrolites could conduct electricity by a conduction proper; that has also been denied by many through long time: though I believed myself right, yet circumstances have induced me to pay that respect to criticism as to re-investigate the subject, and I have the pleasure of thinking that nature confirms my original conclusions. So, though evidence may appear to preponderate extremely in favour of a certain decision, it is wise and proper to hear a counter-statement. You can have no idea how often, and how much, under such an impression, I have desired that the marvellous descriptions which have reached me might prove, in some points, correct; and how frequently I have submitted myself to hot fires, to friction with magnets, to the passes of hands, &c., lest I should be shutting out discovery;--encouraging the strong desire that something might be true, and that I might aid in the development of a new force of nature." He turns then to another evil, and its cure: "The _tendency to deceive ourselves_ regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of _resistance to these desires_; ... the force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error." He winds up his remarks upon this subject with the italicized sentence: "I will simply express my strong belief that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life." He turns then to the necessity of a "habit of forming clear and precise ideas," and of expressing them in "clear and definite language:"--"When the different data required are in our possession, and we have succeeded in forming a clear idea of each, the mind should be instructed to _balance them_ one against another, and not suffered carelessly to hasten to a conclusion." "As a result of this wholesome mental condition, we should be able to form a _proportionate judgment_;" that is, one proportionate to the evidence, ranging through all degrees of probability--while he adds: "Frequently the exercise of the judgment ought to end in _absolute reservation_."

"The education which I advocate," says Faraday, "will require _patience_ and _labour of thought_ in every exercise tending to improve the judgment. It matters not on what subject a person's mind is occupied; he should engage in it with the conviction that it will require mental labour." "Because the education is internal, it is not the less needful; nor is it more the duty of a man that he should cause his child to be taught, than that he should teach himself. Indolence may tempt him to neglect the self-examination and experience which form his school, and weariness may induce the evasion of the necessary practices; but surely a thought of the prize should suffice to stimulate him to the requisite exertion; and to those who reflect upon the many hours and days devoted by a lover of sweet sounds to gain a moderate facility upon a mere mechanical instrument, it ought to bring a correcting blush of shame if they feel convicted of neglecting the beautiful living instrument wherein play all the powers of the mind."

At the commencement of this discourse the lecturer felt called upon to limit the range of his remarks:--"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. Let no one suppose for a moment that the self-education I am about to commend in respect of the things of this life extends to any considerations of the hope set before us, as if man by reasoning could find out God. It would be improper here to enter upon this subject further than to claim an absolute distinction between religious and ordinary belief. I shall be reproached with the weakness of refusing to apply those mental operations which I think good in respect of high things to the very highest. I am content to bear the reproach. 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." There is of course a certain truth in this passage; spiritual discernment is a real thing possessed by some, and not by others; yet is there this absolute distinction between religious and ordinary belief? Surely there is the same opportunity and the same necessity for careful judgment, and for resistance to prejudice or preference, when we are weighing the credentials of anything that may come before us purporting to be a revelation from above; surely too, if we have satisfied ourselves that we possess such a revelation, we must seek for the same clearness of ideas, and must exercise the same patience and labour of thought, if we would understand it aright. That mental discipline which fits us to interpret the works of God cannot but be akin to the intellectual training required for interpreting His word.