Michael Faraday: Third Edition, with PortraitGladstone, J. H. (John Hall)
Science
Michael Faraday: Third Edition, with Portrait
Gladstone, J. H. (John Hall)
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867
And the respect he showed to others he required to be shown to himself.
It is difficult to imagine anyone taking liberties with him, and it
was only in early life that there were small-minded creatures who
would treat him not according to what he was, but according to the
position from which he had risen. His servants and workpeople were
always attentive to the smallest expression of his wish. Still, he
did not "go through his life with his elbows out." He once wrote to
Matteucci: "I see that that moves you which would move me most, viz.
the imputation of a want of good faith; and I cordially sympathize with
anyone who is so charged unjustly. Such cases have seemed to me almost
the only ones for which it is worth while entering into controversy. I
have felt myself not unfrequently misunderstood, often misrepresented,
sometimes passed by, as in the cases of specific inductive capacity,
magneto-electric currents, definite electrolytic action, &c. &c.: but
it is only in the cases where moral turpitude has been implied, that I
have felt called upon to enter on the subject in reply." Yet, where he
felt that his honour was impugned, none could be more sensitive or more
resolute.
This desire to clear himself, combined with his delicate regard for
the feelings of others, struck me forcibly in the following incident.
At Mr. Barlow's, one Friday evening after the discourse, two or three
other chemists and myself were commenting unfavourably on a public act
of Faraday, when suddenly he appeared beside us. I did not hesitate
to tell him my opinion. He gave me a short answer, and joined others
of the company. A few days afterwards he found me in the laboratory
preparing for a lecture, and, without referring directly to what I had
said, he gave me a full history of the transaction in such a way as to
show that he could not have acted otherwise, and at the same time to
render any apology on my part unnecessary.
Intimately connected with his respect for Man as well as reverence
for truth, was the flash of his indignation against any injustice,
and his hot anger against any whom he discovered to be pretenders.
When, for instance, he had convinced himself that the reputed facts of
table-turning and spiritualism were false, his severe denunciation of
the whole thing followed as a matter of course.
Thus, too, a story is told of his once taking the side of the injured
in a street quarrel by the pump in Savile Row. One evening also at
my house, a young man who has since acquired a scientific renown was
showing specimens of some new compounds he had made. A well-known
chemist contemptuously objected that, after all, they were mere
products of the laboratory: but Faraday came to the help of the young
experimenter, and contended that they were chemical substances worthy
of attention, just as much as though they occurred in nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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