296 Notices respecting New Books. 



those who dwell most upon Faraday's simplicity of expression are 

 really aware of the effort sometimes required to understand him. 

 Such a man is not to be skimmed over superficially ; he cannot 

 make his thoughts an alphabet for children, and those who would 

 accompany him to the depths from which he speaks must be 

 prepared to encounter difficulties in the way. Often indeed be 

 speaks in a language not generally known even among scientific men. 

 As Kant in the ' Critic of Pure Reason' was almost necessitated 

 to elaborate a new language for himself, so the incessant con- 

 tact with new truths which it has been Faraday's fortune to 

 experience has rendered a divergence from the accredited forms of 

 expression necessarj'^ to him. He has seen theories fade before the 

 stern realities which he has brought to light, and it is therefore im- 

 possible for him to make use of the language of those theories with 

 the undoubting confidence of those who believe in them. An appa- 

 rent vagueness may sometimes be the result of this scepticism, but 

 this is inevitable with the man, who, working on the boundaries of 

 science, discerns the inadequacies of received notions, and has to 

 cross a chasm of doubt and darkness in his transition from the 

 defective to the true. 



The salient qualities of Faraday's scientific character manifest 

 themselves from the beginning to the end of these volumes, — a 

 union of ardour and patience, the former prompting the attack, the 

 latter holding him to his subject until he has obtained complete 

 possession of it. Every experiment is a wedge which opens a way 

 before it to other results. He places his subject in all imaginable 

 positions, looks round it, and observes all its outlying relations. Give 

 him hold of a fact and the probability is that he will draw a hundred 

 after it, and so master its dependencies as to leave his followers 

 nothing to find. How strikingly is he in this respect contrasted with 

 Oersted, who, having made a great discovery, seemed to have a wall of 

 adamant built round his intellect to prevent him from pursuing it to 

 its consequences. Fructified by this man's intelleci;, each fact be- 

 comes a seedling which ever sprouts and blossoms into new results. 



The memoir to which we have referred as commencing the first 

 volume is followed by others of great importance ; — on the Identity 

 of Electricity, &c., — on the Laws of Electric Conduction, wherein 

 the remarkable influence of fusion upon conducting power is made 

 manifest, — on Electro-Chemical Decomposition, — on the Power of 

 Platinum to induce Combination, — on the Definite Nature and 

 Extent of the Chemical Forces — a memoir of incalculable value, 

 which excited the thoughts and admiration of even metaph3'Sicians 

 at the time of its publication, and at the present moment stirs pro- 

 foundly the minds of scientific men. Faraday has introduced many 

 new terms into science, and the utility of some may not be manifest 

 to superficial thought. But scientific terras, arising as they often do 

 out of theoretic contemplations, often introduce something more 

 than, or diflferent from, the fact into the mind, and hence the possible 

 injury arising from their use. Faraday's constant effort has been to 

 displace those terms which carry with them foregone conclusions by 



