FARADAY AS A DISCOVERER.

Chapter 1.

Parentage: introduction to the royal institution:
earliest experiments: first royal society paper: marriage.

It has been thought desirable to give you and the world some image
of MICHAEL FARADAY, as a scientific investigator and discoverer.
The attempt to respond to this desire has been to me a labour of
difficulty, if also a labour of love. For however well acquainted
I may be with the researches and discoveries of that great
master--however numerous the illustrations which occur to me of the
loftiness of Faraday's character and the beauty of his life--still
to grasp him and his researches as a whole; to seize upon the ideas
which guided him, and connected them; to gain entrance into that
strong and active brain, and read from it the riddle of the world--
this is a work not easy of performance, and all but impossible amid
the distraction of duties of another kind. That I should at one
period or another speak to you regarding Faraday and his work is
natural, if not inevitable; but I did not expect to be called upon
to speak so soon. Still the bare suggestion that this is the fit
and proper time for speech sent me immediately to my task: from it
I have returned with such results as I could gather, and also with
the wish that those results were more worthy than they are of the
greatness of my theme.