400 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



thoughts and memoranda. He made his notes in the 

 laboratory, in the theatre, and in the streets. This 

 distrust of his memory reveals itself in his first letter to 

 Abbot. To a proposition that no new enquiry should 

 be started between them before the old one had been 

 exhaustively discussed, Faraday objects. 'Your notion,' 

 he says, ' I can hardly allow, for the following" reason : 

 ideas and thoughts spring up in my mind which are 

 irrevocably lost for want of noting at the time.' Gentle 

 as he seemed, he wished to have his own way, and he 

 had it throughout his life. Differences of opinion 

 sometimes arose between the two friends, and then they 

 resolutely faced each other. 'I accept your offer to 

 fight it out with joy, and shall in the battle of experi- 

 ence cause not pain, but, I hope, pleasure.' Faraday 

 notes his own impetuosity, and incessantly checks it. 

 There is at times something almost mechanical in his 

 self-restraint. In another nature it would have hardened 

 into mere 'correctness' of conduct; but his overflowing 

 affections prevented this in his case. The habit of self- 

 control became a second nature to him at last, and lent 

 serenity to his later years. 



In October 1812 he was engaged by a Mr. De la 

 Roche as a journeyman bookbinder ; but the situation 

 did not suit him. His master appears to have been an 

 austere and passionate man, and Faraday was to the last 

 degree sensitive. All his life he continued so. He 

 suffered at times from dejection; and a certain grim- 

 ness, too, pervaded his moods. 'At present,' he writes 

 to Abbott, ' I am as serious as you can be, and would 

 not scruple to speak a truth to any human being, what- 

 ever repugnance it might give rise to. Being in this 

 state of mind, I should have refrained from writing to 

 you, did I not conceive from the general tenor of your 

 letters that your mind is, at proper times, occupied upon 



