Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867; Physicists -- Great Britain -- Biography
'My Dear Tyndall,--You see by the top of this letter how much habit
prevails over me; I have just read yours from thence, and yet I think
myself there. However, I have left its science in very good keeping, and
I am glad to learn that you are at experiment once more. But how is the
health? Not well, I fear. I wish you would get yourself strong first
and work afterwards. As for the fruits, I am sure they will be good, for
though I sometimes despond as regards myself, I do not as regards you.
You are young, I am old.... But then our subjects are so glorious,
that to work at them rejoices and encourages the feeblest; delights and
enchants the strongest.
'I have not yet seen anything from Magnus. Thoughts of him always
delight me. We shall look at his black sulphur together. I heard from
Schonbein the other day. He tells me that Liebig is full of ozone, i.e.,
of allotropic oxygen.
'Good-bye for the present.
'Ever, my dear Tyndall,
'Yours truly,
'M. Faraday.'
The contemplation of Nature, and his own relation to her, produced in
Faraday a kind of spiritual exaltation which makes itself manifest here.
His religious feeling and his philosophy could not be kept apart; there
was an habitual overflow of the one into the other.
Whether he or another was its exponent, he appeared to take equal
delight in science. A good experiment would make him almost dance with
delight. In November, 1850, he wrote to me thus:--'I hope some day to
take up the point respecting the magnetism of associated particles.
In the meantime I rejoice at every addition to the facts and reasoning
connected with the subject. When science is a republic, then it gains:
and though I am no republican in other matters, I am in that.' All his
letters illustrate this catholicity of feeling. Ten years ago, when
going down to Brighton, he carried with him a little paper I had just
completed, and afterwards wrote to me. His letter is a mere sample of
the sympathy which he always showed to me and my work.
'Brighton, December 9, 1857.
'My Dear Tyndall,--I cannot resist the pleasure of saying how very much
I have enjoyed your paper. Every part has given me delight. It goes on
from point to point beautifully. You will find many pencil marks, for I
made them as I read. I let them stand, for though many of them receive
their answer as the story proceeds, yet they show how the wording
impresses a mind fresh to the subject, and perhaps here and there you
may like to alter it slightly, if you wish the full idea, i.e., not an
inaccurate one, to be suggested at first; and yet after all I believe
it is not your exposition, but the natural jumping to a conclusion that
affects or has affected my pencil.
'We return on Friday, when I will return you the paper.
'Ever truly yours,
'M. Faraday.'
The third letter will come in its proper place towards the end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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