THE ELECTEICAL AND MAGNETIC DISCOVERIES OF 



FARADAY 



ADDRESS AT THE OPENING OF THE ELECTRICAL CLUB HOUSE OF 

 NEW YORK CITY, 1888 



[Electrical Review, New York, Feb. 4, 1888] 



In the progress of all sciences there are epochs when men, thoroughly 

 fitted by nature, if not by education also, for the most successful study 

 and advancement of their science, are born into the world, and by their 

 natural talent, perseverance and love of their science, give it an impetus 

 which stamps their name forever on its history. But, however great 

 they may be, we know enough of the nature of scientific progress to be 

 sure that there never was one of such greatness as to be absolutely neces- 

 sary to human progress. The world would never have stood still on 

 account of the absence of any name from its annals, and even the place 

 of the immortal Newton would sooner or later have been filled by others, 

 and all the discoveries of his " Principia " have been known to us now, 

 even had he never existed. 



Discoveries, then, have their origin not only in the presence of men 

 of exceptional genius in the world, but in a true and overwhelming 

 progress of science which marches forward to the understanding of the 

 universe, irrespective of the efforts of any single individual to promote 

 or retard it. It is a great fact, whose explanation we find in the craving 

 of mankind for knowledge of nature and power over her. 



As men of genius are born, they find the discoveries of those who 

 have gone before them awaiting them. They join in the good work, 

 and add their efforts toward the advancement of knowledge. But in all 

 cases they start at the point where those who have gone before them 

 have left off; if their work is good they continue it; if it is bad they 

 replace it by better, that the structure of science may be reared on solid 

 foundations, and grow surely and steadily toward a perfect whole. 



To understand, then, the place of any man like Faraday in the history 

 of science, we must also understand the state of that science at the time 

 when he did his work. 



Michael Faraday, the son of a smith, was born in 1791, and was ap- 

 prenticed to a bookseller and bookbinder in 1804. He educated himself 

 by reading, and became the assistant of the great chemist, Sir Humphry 



