338 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



while thus instructing himself that he succeeded in causing 

 a wire carrying an electric current to rotate round a mag- 

 netic pole. This was not the result sought by Wollaston, 

 but it was closely related to it. 



The strong tendency of Faraday's mind to look upon 

 the reciprocal actions of natural forces gave birth to his 

 greatest discoveries ; and we, who know this, should be 

 justified in concluding that, even had Wollaston not pre- 

 ceded him, the result would have been the same. But in 

 judging Davy we ought to transport ourselves to his time, 

 and carefully exclude from our thoughts and feelings that 

 noble subsequent life which would render simply impossible 

 the ascription to Faraday of anything unfair. It would be 

 unjust to Davy to put our knowledge in the place of his, 

 or to credit him with data which he could not have pos- 

 sessed. Rumor and fact had connected the name of Wol- 

 laston with these supposed interactions between magnets 

 and currents. When, therefore, Faraday in October pub- 

 lished his successful experiment without any allusion to 

 Wollaston, general, though really ungrounded, criticism 

 followed. I say ungrounded because, firstly, Faraday's ex- 

 periment was not that of Wollaston, and secondly, Faraday, 

 before he published it, had actually called upon Wollaston, 

 and not finding him at home did not feel himself authorized 

 to mention his name. 



In December Faraday published a second paper on the 

 same subject, from which, through a misapprehension, the 

 name of Wollaston was also omitted. Warburton and 

 others thereupon affirmed that Wollaston's ideas had been 

 appropriated without acknowledgment, and it is plain that 

 Wollaston himself, though cautious in his utterance, was 

 also hurt* Censure grew till it became intolerable. "I 

 hear," writes Faraday to. his friend Stodart, " every day 

 more and more of these sounds, which, though only whis- 

 pers, to me, arc, I suspect, spoken aloud among scientific 



