In one of his very earliest lectures delivered before the City Philosophical Society on the subject of chlorine,[11] Faraday referred to the question too often and too thoughtlessly put on hearing of a new discovery. "Before leaving this subject," he said, "I will point out the history of this substance, as an answer to those who are in the habit of saying to every new fact, 'What is its use?' Benjamin Franklin says to such, 'What is the use of an infant?' The answer of the experimentalist is, 'endeavour to make it useful.'" Truly the infant Electricity has already grown to goodly proportions. It is to his researches in connection with electrical science that we must look for the chief result of Faraday's work. His later years were almost exclusively taken up in the investigation of this fascinating subject. The value of his contributions to the sum of knowledge on this new branch of science was testified to in a remarkable manner during the past summer, when the centenary of his birth was celebrated in a fitting manner at that Institution which had been a "home" to him for so many years. It was indeed an unique incident in the history of modern science, when on the 17th of June, 1891, many of the leading living scientists met in the theatre of the Royal Institution to hear a lecture by Lord Rayleigh on the life-work of "one of England's greatest worthies." "A quarter of a century has not elapsed," wrote a contemporary journal,[12] "since his death, and yet we find the highest nobles of the land vieing with the most illustrious professors of our own and of foreign universities in testifying their admiration for this man of the people, who rose to be a leader of scientific men." "When the history of electricity comes to be written," continues the same authority, "a chapter of great extent and first importance must be given to the prolific life-work of Faraday. He will be pointed to as the man who in the middle of the nineteenth century, waged an energetic and relentless warfare against the two fluid theories in electricity and magnetism, and who dealt its death-blow to the theory of action at a distance. And to show the powerful influence his master-mind exercised over contemporary science, the historian may merely refer to Clerk-Maxwell, Sir William Thomson, Rayleigh, Tyndall, and others, all admiring disciples and professed followers of the great Michael Faraday." The meeting that thus did honour to the memory of Faraday, was probably the most fitting method of celebrating the anniversary of his birth that could have been devised; it was, we may feel sure, just such a celebration as Faraday would have felt most proud of. Wealth and social rank, as we have seen throughout his life, had no attraction for him; but he _did_ like to receive the appreciation of capable men, in whose appreciation he found the highest honour to which it was possible to attain.