lv 



ridiculous world ours is as far as concerns the mind of man ! How full of 

 inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities it is! I declare that, taking 

 the average of many minds that have recently come before me (and apart 

 from that spirit which God has placed in each), and accepting for a moment 

 that average as a standard, I should far prefer the obedience, affections, and 

 instinct of a dog before it. Do not whisper this, however, to others. There 

 is One above who worketh in all things, and who governs even in the midst 

 of that misrule to which the tendencies and powers of men are so easily 

 perverted." 



After this year, as Director of the Laboratory and Superintendent of the 

 House, he received £300 from the Royal Institution. 



He was made Foreign Associate of the Royal Academy of Sciences, 

 Turin, and Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, 

 Mauritius. 



m. 62 (1854). 



At the end of this year he sent a long paper to the Philosophical Ma- 

 gazine on some points of magnetic philosophy. He begins saying : — 

 "Within the last three years I have been bold enough, though only as 

 an experimentalist, to put forth new views of magnetic action in papers 

 having for titles, ' On Lines of Magnetic Force,' Phil. Trans. 1852; and 

 'On Physical Lines of Magnetic Force,' Phil. Mag. 1862. I propose to 

 call the attention of experimenters in a somewhat desultory manner to the 

 subject again, both as respects the deficiency of the present physical views 

 and the possible existence of lines of physical force." 



A course of lectures on education was given by different eminent men at 

 the Royal Institution. Prince Albert came to Faraday's " Observations 

 of Mental Education" on the 6th of May. In reprinting them, he said, 

 f* They are so immediately connected in their nature and origin with my 

 own experimental life, considered either as cause or consequence, that I have 

 thought the close of this volume (of Researches on Chemistry and Physics) 

 not an unfit place for their reproduction." He ends his lecture by saying, 

 " My thoughts would flow back amongst the events and reflections of my 

 past life, until I found nothing present itself but an open declaration — 

 almost a confession — as a means of performing the duty due to the subject 

 and to you." 



He gave two Friday discourses on Electric Induction, associated cases of 

 Current and Static Effects ; and on Magnetic Hypotheses. 



The Parliamentary Committee of the British Association applied to him 

 through Lord Wrottesley for his opinion whether any and what measures 

 could be adopted by the Government or the Legislature to improve the 

 position of science or of the cultivators of science in this country. He an- 

 swers : — " I feel unfit to give a deliberate opinion. My course of life and 

 the circumstances which make it a happy one for me are not those of per- 

 sons who conform to the usages and habits of society. Through the kind- 

 ness of all, from my Sovereign downwards, I have that which supplies all 



