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."