398 
we not hear a little less [frequently than we do that re- 
search is a sham, and that all attempts to aid it savour of 
jobbery? 
Lastly we may consider Faraday’s place in the general 
history of Science ; this is far from easy. Our minds are 
still too much occupied with the memory of the outward 
form and expression of his scientific work to be able to 
compare him aright with the other great men among 
whom we shall have to place him. 
Every great man of the first rank is unique. Each has 
his own office and his own place in the historic procession 
of the sages. That office did not exist even in the imagi- 
nation, till he came to fill it, and none can succeed to his 
place when he has passed away. Others may gain dis- 
tinction by adapting the exposition of science to the vary- 
ing language of each generation of students, but their true 
function is not so much didactic as pedagogic—not to 
teach the use of phrases which enable us to persuade our- 
selves that we understand a science, but to bring the 
student into living contact with the two main sources of 
mental growth, the fathers of the sciences, for whose per- 
sonal influence over the opening mind there is no substi- 
tute, and the material things to which their labours first 
gave a meaning. 
Faraday is, and must always remain, the father of that 
enlarged science of electro-magnetism which takes in at 
one view, all the phenomena which former inquirers had 
studied separately, besides those which Faraday himself 
discovered by following the guidance of those convic- 
tions, which he had already obtained, of the unity of the 
whole science. 
Before him came the discovery of most of the funda- 
mental phenomena, the electric and magnetic attractions 
and repulsions, the electric current and its effects. Then 
came Cavendish, Coulomb, and Poisson, who by 
following the path pointed out ‘by Newton, and 
making the forces which act between bodies the prin- 
cipal object of their study, founded the mathema- 
tical theories of electric and magnetic forces. Then 
Orsted discovered the cardinal fact of electro-mag- 
netic force, and Ampére investigated the mathematical 
laws of the mechanical action between electric currents. 
Thus the field of electro-magnetic Science was already 
very large when Faraday first entered upon his public 
career. It was so large that to take in at one view all its 
departments required a stretch of thought for which a 
special preparation was necessary. Accordingly, we find 
Faraday endeavouring in the first place to obtain, from each 
of the known sources of electric action, all the pheno- 
mena which any one of them was able to exhibit. Having 
thus established the unity of nature of all electric mani- 
festations, his next aim was to form a conception of elec- 
trification, or electric action, which would embrace them 
all. For this purpose it was necessary that he should 
begin by getting rid of those parasitical ideas, which are 
so apt to cling to every scientific term, and to invest it 
with a luxuriant crop of connotative meanings flourishing 
at the expense of the meaning which the word was in- 
tended to denote. He therefore endeavoured to strip all 
such terms as “electric: fluid,’ “current,” and “attrac- 
tion” of every meaning except that which is warranted by 
the phenomena themselves, and to invent new terms, such 
as “ electrolysis,” “electrode,” “ dielectric,” which suggest 
NATURE 
no other meaning than that assigned to them by their 
definitions. ; 
He thus undertook no less a task than the investigation 
of the facts, the ideas, and the scientific terms of electro- 
magnetism, and the result was the remodelling of the whole 
according to an entirely new method. 
That old and popular phrase, “ electric fluid,” which is 
now, we trust, banished for ever into the region of news- 
paper paragraphs, had done what it could to keep men’s 
minds fixed upon those particular parts of bodies where 
the “fluid” was supposed to exist, 
Faraday, on the other hand, by inventing the word 
“dielectric,” has encouraged us to examine all that is 
going on in the air or other medium between the electri- 
fied bodies, 
It is needless to multiply instances of this kind. The 
terms, field of force, lines of force, induction, &c., are suf- 
ficient to recall them. They all-illustrate the general 
principles of the growth of science, in the particular form 
of which Faraday is the exponent. 
We have, first, the careful observation of selected phe- 
nomena, then the examination of the received ideas, and 
the formation, when necessary, of new ideas ; and, lastly, 
the invention of scientific terms adapted for the discus- 
sion of the phenomena in the light of the new ideas. 
The high place which we assign to Faraday in electro- 
magnetic science may appear to some inconsistent with 
the fact that electromagnetic science is an exact science, 
and that in some of its branches it had already assumed 
a mathematical form before the time of Faraday, whereas 
Faraday was not a professed mathematician, and in his 
writings we find none of those integrations of differential 
equations which are supposed to be of the very essence ofan 
exact science. Open Poisson and Ampére, who went before 
him, or Weber and Neumann, who came after him, and 
you will find their pages full of symbols, not one of which 
Faraday would have understood. It is admitted that 
Faraday made some great discoveries, but if we put these 
aside, how can we rank his scientific method so high 
without disparaging the mathematics of these eminent 
men? 
It is true that no one can essentially cultivate any 
exact science without understanding the mathematics of 
that science. But we are not to suppose that the calcu- 
lations and equations which mathematicians find so use- 
ful constitute the whole of mathematics. The calculus is 
but a part of mathematics. 
The geometry of position is an example of a mathe- 
matical science established without the aid of a single 
calculation. Now Faraday’s lines of force occupy the 
same position in electromagnetic science that pencils of 
lines do in the geometry of position. They furnish a 
method of building up an exact mental image of the thing 
we are reasoning about. The way in which Faraday 
made use of his idea of lines of force in co-ordinating the 
phenomena of magneto-electric induction* shows him to 
have been in reality a mathematician of a very high order 
* To estimate the ixfensity of Faraday’s scientific power, we cannot do 
better than read the first and second series of his ‘* Researches,” and compare 
them, first,with the statements in Bence Jones's ‘‘ Life of Faraday,” which tells 
us the tales of the first discovery of the facts, and of the final publication of 
the results, and second, with the whole course of electromagnetic science 
since, which has added no new idea to those set forth, but has only v: 
the truth and scientific value of every one of them, 
