166 



DISCOVERY 



and reverently thoiipht they had the universe " taped " 

 had to confess their mistake when the feeble opposition 

 which some of them put up to the new theories had 

 been completely demolished by experimental facts. 

 (Ine thing is very certain now. and that is, that in 

 thirty years the people living then will look upon us 

 as blind as bats for failing to discover the host of 

 obvious things which to them will be commonplace. 

 ***** 

 Progress and development in science have been very 

 much in my mind through reading recently several 

 books on the history of that subject. In particular one 

 book, published by the Cambridge Press, has interested 

 me very much. The Scientific Papers of the Hon. 

 Henry Cavendish, F.R.S.^ This is really a magnificent 

 work. Every lover of science must be grateful to the 

 editors of these two volumes for their labour of love, 

 and to the publishers for their courage and enterprise 

 in publishing this complete edition of the scientific 

 writings of Cavendish. 



***** 

 These two volumes are the final garnering of the 

 work of one of the greatest of discoverers. They 

 contain the whole of Cavendish's previously published 

 work and all the important work that has hitherto 

 remained unpublished. The first volume appeared in 

 a different form in 1879. It was then edited by 

 Professor Clerk Maxwell. In 1874 Cavendish's papers 

 preserved by his kinsman, the Duke of Devonshire — 

 a very remarkable and even mysterious record of 

 progress in electrical as well as in chemical science — 

 were put into Clerk Maxwell's hands, and the editing 

 of the MSS. was his chief continuous literary occupa- 

 tion until his death five years later. The result was 

 The Electrical Researches, of which it has been said 

 " there is no instance in the history of science in which 

 the unpublished records left by an investigator have 

 been arranged and elucidated with such minute 

 fidelity." The first volume is a new edition of this 

 one. It has been carefully revised and annotated by 

 Sir Joseph Larmor. It contains as an appendix Dr. 

 Thomas Young's life of Cavendish, printed originally 

 in the Encyclopadia Britannica, and as frontispiece a 

 reproduction of the only portrait of Cavendish extant, 

 a water-colour sketch preserved in the British Museum. 

 ***** 

 The second volume is quite new. It deals with the 

 chemical and dynamical work. Sir Edward Thorpe, 



' The Scientific Papers of the Hon. Henry Cavendish, F.R.S., 

 two volumes. Vol. I : The Electrical Researches, edited by 

 James Clerk Maxwell, F.R.S. Revised by Sir Joseph Larmor, 

 F.R.S., M.P. Vol. II : Chemical and Dynamical, edited by 

 Sir Edward Thorpe, F.R.S. (Cambridge University Press, 

 1 20s. net.) 



who e(hts it, has gone carefully through the unpublished 

 papers dealing with researches in chemistry, and has 

 welded the mass into a most interesting whole. He 

 contributes a most valuable introduction. On special 

 points he has had the assistance of four of his colleague - 

 in the Royal Society. 



***** 

 Henry Cavendish (i 731-18 10) was a remarkable 

 man. There was nothing Byronic about him. Hi- 

 differed so greatly from the conventional eighteenth- 

 century type that a superficial observer might almost 

 consider him eccentric. He did not quite manage to 

 sell all that he had and give it to science. He gav< 

 himself, which was a great deal, and the rest that hi 

 had accumulated at the bank — accumulated there for 

 other people. For a man whose grandfathers were 

 dukes he lived a very simple and unostentatious life, 

 being no more lavish in his expenditure than the man 

 whom Mr. Punch conceives to be the canny Scot. Yet 

 when he died he left a million and a half. He was 

 undoubtedly one of the originals of a once popular 

 conception of a scientist, the eccentric who can explain 

 the universe, but is not quite sure of the change of 

 a shilling. He had shy, conservative, and unconven- 

 tional habits. He had a hatred of women, of talking, 

 of any town except London, of any meat except mutton. 

 His voice on the rare occasions w^hen he used it was 

 squeaky, and his manner embarrassed. A contem- 

 porary writer says of him that " he had a peevish 

 impatience of the inconveniences of eminence." His 

 dress was about fifty years out of fashion — a three- 

 cornered cocked hat, a high coat collar, frilled shirt- 

 wrists, and a faded violet suit. 



***** 



In reading a biography one is perhaps too apt to 

 remember a man's eccentricities. There is another 

 side. Cavendish was a thoroughly good scientist. In 

 all his scientific work and relations he was perfectly 

 normal. He was a prominent member of the Royal 

 Society, attended its meetings regularly, talked there, 

 dined with fellow-members after the meetings, and 

 published all he did publish in the Royal Society's 

 Transactions. Indeed, one may say that but for his 

 eccentricities Cavendish would have frittered away his 

 life as an eighteenth-century buck. Instead of that 

 Cavendish was — well, he was Cavendish. 



***** 



Cavendish indeed was a magnificent experimenter. 

 There is an old taunt sometimes flung against the 

 modern physicist in his beautiful laboratory with its 

 expensive apparatus, " He cannot see the truth for 

 the brass." Brass and lacquer did not stand in 

 Cavendish's light. For one thing, in his day all appara- 

 tus was crude and primitive ; for another. Cavendish's 



