556 Professor Faraday^ on Whratstone's [June 11, 



The value of the public recognition of science as a leading 

 branch of education, may be estimated in a very considerable degree 

 by observation of the results of the education which it has obtained 

 incidentally from those, who pursuing it, have educated themselves. 

 Though men may be specially fitted by the nature of their minds 

 for the attainment and advance of literature, science, or the fine 

 arts, all these men, and all others, require first to be educated in that 

 which is known in these respective mental paths ; and when they 

 go beyond this preliminary teaching, they require a self-education 

 directed (at least in science) to the highest reasoning power of the 

 mind. Any part of pure science may be selected to show how 

 much this private self-teaching has done, and by that to aid the 

 present movement in favour of the recognition generally of scientific 

 education in an equal degree with that which is literary ; but perhaps 

 electricity, as being the portion which has been left most to its own 

 development, and has produced as its results the most enduring 

 marks on the face of the globe, may be referred to. In 1800, Volta 

 discovered the voltaic pile ; giving a source and form of electricity 

 before unknown. It was not an accident, but resulted from his 

 mental self-education : it was, at first, a feeble instrument, giving 

 feeble results ; but by the united mental exertions of other men, 

 who educated themselves through the force of thought and experi- 

 ment, it has been raised up to such a degree of power as to give us 

 light, and heat, and magnetic and chemical action, in states more 

 exalted than those supplied by any other means. 



In 1819, Oersted discovered the magnetism of the electric cur- 

 rent, and its relation to the magnetic needle ; and as an immediate 

 consequence, other men, as Arago and Davy, instructing themselves 

 by the partial laws and action of the bodies concerned, magnetized 

 iron by the current. The results were so feeble at first as to be 

 scarcely visible ; but, by the exertion of self-taught men since then, 

 they have been exalted so highly as to give us magnets of a force 

 unimaginable in former times. 



In 1831, the induction of electrical currents one by another, and 

 the evolution of electricity from magnets was observed, — at first in 

 results so small and feeble, that it required one much instructed in 

 the pursuit, to perceive and lay hold of them ; but these feeble 

 results, taken into the minds of men already partially educated and 

 ever proceeding onwards in their self-education, have been so deve- 

 loped, as to supply sources of electricity independent of the voltaic 

 battery or the electric machine, yet having the power of both, com- 

 bined in a manner and degree which they, neither separate nor 

 together, could ever have given it, and applicable to all the prac- 

 tical electrical purposes of life. 



To consider all the departments of electricity fully, would be 

 to lose the argument for its fitness in subserving education, in the 

 vastness of its extent ; and it will be better to confine the attention 

 to one application, as the electric telegraph, and even to one small 



