HELMHOLTZ IN BERLIN 



for a man of original thought to discover new truth 

 than to discover why other people do not understand 

 and do not follow him. This difficulty must increase 

 in Faraday's case, because he had not gone through 

 the same common course of scientific education as 

 the majority of his readers. Now that the mathe- 

 matical interpretation of Faraday's conceptions re- 

 garding the nature of electric and magnetic forces has 

 been given by Clerk Maxwell, we see how great a 

 degree of exactness and precision was really hidden 

 behind the words, which, to Faraday's contemporaries, 

 appeared either vague or obscure ; and it is in the 

 highest degree astonishing to see what a large number 

 of general theorems, the methodical deduction of 

 which requires the highest powers of mathematical 

 analysis, he found by a kind of intuition, with the 

 security of instinct, without the help of a single 

 mathematical formula. I have no intention of blam- 

 ing his contemporaries, for I confess that many times 

 I have myself sat hopelessly looking upon some 

 paragraph of Faraday's description of lines of Force, 

 or of the galvanic current being an axis of power, 

 etc. A single remarkable discovery may, of course, 

 be the result of a happy accident, and may not 

 indicate the possession of any special gift on the 

 part of the discoverer ; but it is against all rules of 

 probability, that the train of thought which has led 

 to such a series of surprising and unexpected dis- 

 coveries, as were those of Faraday, should be with- 

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