"
Our highest admiration must be for the discoverers; but we may do well
to remind ourselves, from time to time, that to such men we are indebted
not only for thrilling insight into the beautiful mysteries of nature,
and for the withdrawal of the veil which shuts out from ordinary sight
the august magnificences of nature, but also for the discovery of those
principles which can be turned to the best practical account,
ministering to us in our kitchens and bed-chambers and drawing-rooms and
factories and shops and fields, filling our nights with brilliancy and
our days with potencies, giving to each man the capability of
accomplishing in one year what his ancestors, who lived in unscientific
ages, could not have achieved in twenty; not only exhibiting the forces
of nature as steeds, but also showing how they may be harnessed to the
chariots of civilization.
To keep us in healthful gratitude to the men who, having turned away
from the marts of the money-makers, have unselfishly set themselves to
discover what will enrich the money-makers, and, content to live in
simple sorts of ways, have sent down beauty and comfort into the homes
of rich and poor, it is well to make an occasional _resume_ of the
results of the work of useful scientists, and ponder the lessons of
their single-mindedness.
FARADAY.
Few names on the roll of the worthies of science are better known
through all the world than that of Michael Faraday, who was born in
England in 1791 and died in 1867.
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