FARADAY. 793 



expressed in a lecture on mental education delivered in 1854, and printed at the 

 end of his Researches in Chemistry and Physics. 



"Before entering upon the subject, I must make one distinction which, however it may appear 

 to others, is to me of the utmost importance. High as man is placed above the creatures around him, 

 there is a higher and far more exalted position within his view; and the ways are infinite in 

 which he occupies his thoughts about the fears, or hopes, or expectations of a future life. I 

 believe that the truth of that future cannot be brought to his knowledge by any exertion of his 

 mental powers, however exalted they may be; that it is made known to him by other teaching 

 than his own, and is received through simple belief of the testimony given. Let no one suppose for 

 an instant that the self-education I am about to commend, in respect of the things of this life, 

 exteuds to any considerations of the hope set before us, as if man by reasoning could find out God. 

 It would be improper here to enter upon the subject farther than to claim an absolute distinction 

 between religious and ordinary, .belief. I shall be reproached with the weakness of refusing to apply 

 those mental operations which I think good in respect of high things to the very highest. I am 

 content to bear the reproach. Yet even in earthly matters I believe that 'the invisible things of 

 Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are 

 made, even His eternal power and Godhead'; and I have never seen anything incompatible between 

 those things of man which can be known by the spirit of man which is within him, and those 

 higher things concerning his future which he cannot know, by that spirit." 



Faraday gives the following note as to this lecture : 



"These observations were delivered as a lecture before His Royal Highness the Prince Consort 

 and the members of the Royal Institution on the 6th of May, 1854. They are so immediately con- 

 nected in their nature and origin with my own experimental life, considered either as cause or 

 consequence, that I have thought the close of this volume not an unfit place for their repro- 

 duction." 



As Dr Bence Jones concludes 



"His standard of duty was supernatural. It was not founded on any intuitive ideas of right 

 and wrong, nor was it fashioned upon any outward experiences of time and place, but it was 

 formed entirely on what he held to be the revelation of the will of God in the written word, 

 and throughout all his life his faith led him to act up to the very letter of it." 



Published Works. Chemical Manipulation, being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, 1 vol., 

 John Murray, 1st edition 1827, 2nd 1830, 3rd 1842; Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. 

 i. and II., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. I. and n. 1844 and 1847; vol. in. 1844; vol. in., 

 Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855; Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, 

 Taylor and Francis, 1859; Lectures on l/w Chemical History of a Candle (edited by W. Crookes), 

 Griffin, Bohn, and Co., 1861 ; On the various Forces in Nature (edited by W. Crookes), Chatto and 

 Windus (no date). 



Biographies. Faraday as a Discoverer, by John Tyndall, Longmans, 1st edition 1868, 2nd edition 

 1870; The Life and Letters of Faraday, by Dr Bence Jones, Secretary of the Royal Institution, in 

 2 vols., Longmans, 1870; Michael Faraday, by J. H. Gladstone, Ph.D., F.R.S., Macmillan, 1872. 



VOL. H. 100 



