22 September: Boreham on Michael Faraday

Simplicities of Science
The amazing thing about Michael Faraday, whose birthday this is, is that, on the crude foundation of the poorest possible education, he succeeded in establishing his position as one of the most accomplished scholars that the ages have known. In the realms of commerce and industry we are scarcely surprised when; every now and again, self-made and even illiterate men make a notable mark. It is the triumph of a vigorous mind and a sturdy character over the hardships and disadvantages that unfriendly conditions have imposed. We admire it; we applaud it; but we are not astonished at it. But when, as in Faraday's case, a boy begins by cleaning boots and washing bottles, and ends by becoming the most eminent scientist of his time, he really appears to have achieved the impossible.

Beginning life in poverty, Faraday never showed the slightest desire for wealth. He married on a salary of £2 a week, and, although he might easily have amassed an enormous fortune, it is doubtful if, to the end of his days, he ever earned £400 a year. He invented, but he never patented his inventions. "If they are of any use to the world," he would say, "let the world have the benefit of them!" He argued that it was by the kindness of others that he had acquired the knowledge that had made his masterly achievements possible.

A Hungry Mind Finds Satisfaction Everywhere
Faraday always said that the greatest day of his life was the day on which he became apprenticed to a second-hand bookseller. In this lowly employment it was his duty to patch up and rebind the battered volumes. The boy soon exhibited an extraordinary capacity for imbibing the contents of the books he covered. He made each book pay for its new coat by yielding to his hungry mind the hoarded treasure that it carried. Conspicuously among these indigent tomes was an ancient encyclopaedia, very much the worse for wear. In reclothing it and investing it with a respectability worthy of its inherent dignity, Faraday became infatuated by certain scientific themes of which it treated, and he always averred that it was this old encyclopaedia that determined his destiny. He learned far more in the dusty old bookshop than many students imbibe in the course of a university career. Fortunately, his employer, instead of scowling upon the boy's abstraction, encouraged him in his abstruse and recondite studies. Other people behaved very similarly. To earn a few extra pence, he blacked the boots of an artist who boarded with the bookseller. Taking a fancy to the eager boy, the artist taught him the principles of perspective, lent him books, and gave him lessons in drawing. And his brother, Robert Faraday, a working blacksmith, discovering Michael's desperate anxiety to attend evening lectures, paid the requisite fees out of his own scanty earnings at the forge. And, most gratifying of all, when the time came to approach the men whose names were household words in the halls of science, the boy found a most illustrious and redoubtable champion standing at the salute, awaiting the opportunity to serve him.

Trembling in every limb, Faraday screwed up courage to write to Sir Humphry Davy. For a while the only response, beyond a formal acknowledgment, was a commission to bind for Sir Humphry an immense stack of the great man's worn-out books. But, one memorable day, to the youth's inexpressible astonishment, Sir Humphry's coach drew up outside the bookshop, and, as a result of an embarrassing interview, Faraday was appointed to the position of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution. From that moment, he never looked back. With amazing intellectual agility he made his way from one branch of research to another.

'As The Greatest Only Are, In Simplicity Sublime'
To the very end he appeared utterly oblivious of his own greatness. His beautiful simplicity remained sublimely unspoiled. He consistently behaved like a curious child asking penetrating questions concerning the wonders around him. Never for a moment did he seem to realise that he was changing the face of civilisation. He never suspected, as Mr. Wilfrid L. Randell observes, that he was bringing into existence our immense modern power-houses, making it possible for men to fly round the world, and laying the foundations of all wireless communication. He electrified the industry and commerce of the world, and made less fuss about it than some men would make of a creditable round of golf. His humility was his most captivating charm. Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse has well asked:

Was ever man so simple and so sage,
So crowned and yet so careless of a prize?
Great Faraday, who made the world so wise,
And loved the labour better than the wage!
And this, you say, is how he looked in age,
With that strong brow and those great humble eyes
That seem to look with reverent surprise
On all outside himself. Turn o'er the page,
Recording Angel, it is white as snow!
Ah, God, a fitting messenger was he
To show Thy mysteries to us below!
Child as he came has he returned to Thee!
Would he could come but once again to show
The wonder-deep of his simplicity!

In Faraday the loftiest traditions of the scientific temper are exemplified at their very best. He never closed his eyes to any fragment of truth, however unwelcome; he never divided his mind into watertight compartments; he never shrank from the approach of an honest doubt. Yet, whilst confronting his doubts without flinching, he revelled in the sublimest certainties, weaving them into the very fibre and fabric of his daily life. "Mr. Faraday," said one who stood beside him at the last, "it would be of immense value to us all if you would give us the benefit of your final speculations." "Speculations!" exclaimed the dying sage with a beatific smile, "My dear Sir, I have finished with speculations; I am resting on certainties, for I know Whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day!"

F W Boreham

Image: Michael Faraday