< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
rubbing his hands with delight because he had been fortunate enough to see the lightning strike the church-tower.
This perseverance in a noble strife was another of the grand elements in his success. His tenacity of purpose showed itself equally in little and in great things. Arranging some apparatus one day with a philosophical-instrument maker, he let fall on the floor a small piece of glass: he made several ineffectual attempts to pick it up. "Never mind," said his companion, "it is not worth the trouble." "Well, but, Murray, I don't like to be beaten by any thing that I have once tried to do."
This faithful discharge of duty, this almost intuitive insight into natural phenomena, and this persevering enthusiasm in the pursuit of truth, might alone have secured a great position in the scientific world, but they alone could never have won for him that large inheritance of respect and love. His contemporaries might have gazed upon him with an interest and admiration akin to that with which he watched a thunder-storm; but who feels his affections drawn out toward a mere intellectual Jupiter? We must look deeper into his character to understand this. There is a law well recognized in the science of light and heat, that a body can absorb only the same sort of rays which it is capable of emitting. Just so it is in the moral world. The respect and love of his generation were given to Faraday because his own nature was full of love and respect for others.
Each of these qualities—his respect for and love to others, or, more generally, his reverence and kindliness—deserves careful examination.
Throughout his life, Michael Faraday appeared as though standing in a reverential attitude toward Nature, Man, and God—toward Nature, for he regarded the universe as a vast congeries of facts which would not bend to human theories. Speaking of his own early life, he says: "I was a very lively, imaginative person, and could believe in the 'Arabian Nights' as easily as in the 'Encyclopædia;' but facts were important to me, and saved me. I could trust a fact, and always cross-examined an assertion." He was, indeed, a true disciple of that philosophy which says: "Man, who is the servant and interpreter of Nature, can act and understand no further than he has, either in operation or contemplation, observed of the method and order of Nature." And, verily, Nature admitted her servant into her secret chambers, and showed him marvels to interpret to his fellow-men more wonderful and beautiful than the phantasmagoria of Eastern romance.
His reverence toward Man showed itself in the respect he uniformly paid to others and to himself. Thoroughly genuine and simple-hearted himself, he was wont to credit his fellow-men with high motives and good reasons. This was rather uncomfortable when one was conscious of no such merit, and I, at least, have felt ashamed, in his presence, of the poor, commonplace grounds of my words and actions. To be in his company was, in fact, a moral tonic. As he had learned the difficult art of honoring all men, he was not likely to run after those whom the world counted great. "We must get Garibaldi to come some Friday evening," said a member of the Institution, during the visit of the Italian hero to London. "Well, if Garibaldi thinks he can learn any thing from us, we shall be happy to see him," was Faraday's reply. This nobility of regard not only preserved him from envying the success of other explorers in the same field, but led him heartily to rejoice with them in their discoveries.

Healthy Houses: A Hand-Book of the History, Defects, and Remedies of Drainage, Ventilation, and Warming. With upward of Three Hundred Illustrations. By William Eassie, C. E.

This is an excellent little manual on sanitary science, intended, as the author observes, to be a record of facts—of acquired experiences and published inventions in relation to house-construction. It is both scientific and practical, the science being universal, and the practice English. But, from an hygienic point of view, the subject of house-construction is much the same in given latitudes. Human life and its conditions being everywhere similar wherever the largest number are "to be fed, housed, educated, amused, enriched, and all in the smallest possible space," which is Mr. Eassie's ideal of a dwelling, the same questions must constantly arise, the same dangers are to be avoided, and the same advantages secured. The author has compressed an enormous amount of valuable information on the subject of sanitary construction within very narrow limits, and his book is written in an unusually compressed and pithy style. He gives descriptions of the best contrivances in use for attaining salubrity in all parts of the dwelling, and furnishes the reader with exact estimates of their cost. His book, indeed, is a condensed report upon the present state of art and science in England as applied to the utilities of household arrangement and construction. The following passage, describ-

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