THE FORCES OF MATTER 



BY MICHAEL FARADAY 



LECTURE I 



THE FORCE OF GRAVITATION 



IT grieves me much to think that I may have been a cause 

 of disturbance to your Christmas arrangements, for 

 nothing is more satisfactory to my mind than to perform 

 what I undertake; but such things are not always left to 

 our own power, and we must submit to circumstances as they 

 are appointed. I will to-day do my best, and will ask you 

 to bear with me if I am unable to give more than a few 

 words; and, as a substitute, I will endeavor to make the 

 illustrations of the sense I try to express as full as possible; 

 and if we find by the end of this lecture that we may be 

 justified in continuing them, thinking that next week our 

 power shall be greater, why, then, with submission to you, 

 we will take such course as you may think fit, either to go 

 on or discontinue them; and although I now feel much 

 weakened by the pressure of the illness (a mere cold) upon 

 me, both in facility of expression and clearness of thought, I 

 shall here claim, as I always have done on these occasions, 

 the right of addressing myself to the younger members of the 

 audience ; and for this purpose, therefore, unfitted as it may 

 seem for an elderly, infirm man to do so, I will return to 

 second childhood, and become, as it were, young again among 

 the young. 



Let us now consider, for a little while, how wonderfully 

 we stand upon this world. Here it is we are born, bred, and 

 live, and yet we view these things with an almost entire 

 absence of wonder to ourselves respecting the way in which 

 all this happens. So small, indeed, is our wonder, that we are 

 never taken by surprise; and I do think that, to a young 



5 



