John Prescott Joule, Lord Kelvin 43 



as one of the greatest scientific intellects of his time, sur- 

 passed in power by none, in originality perhaps only by 

 Maxwell. Well merited honours came to him in rapid 

 succession. He was created a knight in 1866, General 

 Commander of the Victorian Order in 1896, and a Peer of 

 Great Britain as Lord Kelvin in 1892. The Royal Society 

 awarded to him the Copley Medal their highest distinc- 

 tion in 1883, and he occupied their Presidential Chair 

 between 1890 and 1895. He was one of the original members 

 of the Order of Merit, which was founded in 1902, and in 

 the same year was made a Privy Councillor. He was buried 

 in Westminster Abbey by the side of Newton. 



Lord Kelvin's powers of work were prodigious and his 

 memory unequalled. He claimed to be able to take up at 

 any time the thread of an investigation which he had left 

 unfinished ten years previously. His brain was uninterruptedly 

 active ; his notebook handy on every railway journey, and 

 he could work till the late hours of an evening without 

 risking a sleepless night. 



Everyone interested in the history of science must often 

 have asked himself the question how far its progress would 

 have been retarded if a particular brain had never been 

 called into existence. With few exceptions the answer 

 arrived at would be that, though discoveries might have- 

 been delayed and reached by different roads, and the work 

 of one man divided between two and three, the effect in the 

 long run would have been small and perhaps insignificant ; 

 but it is difficult to believe that science would stand where 

 it does to-day if Maxwell had never lived. Faraday's way 

 of looking at things was perhaps equally distinctive, but 

 Faraday's originality lay in the manner in which he was 

 led to perform the experiments which brought new facts 

 to light, and the same experiments might have suggested 

 themselves to others in a different manner. Maxwell's 

 originality of thought, on the other hand, was the essential 

 factor in the investigation, and it is almost impossible to see 

 how his results could have been arrived at by a different 

 road from that which he took. He also possessed another 

 power not always given to great intellects. A mind that 

 excels in originality is frequently unable or, at any rate, 



