Faraday to Augusta Ada Lovelace   24 October 1844

Royal Institution | 24 Octr. 1844.

Dear Lady Lovelace

Your letter¹ ought to have been answered before but there are two circumstances which have caused delay, its high character and my want of health, for since I returned from a very forced journey to Durham² I have been under the Doctor's hands: I am quickly recovering and now have the difficult pleasure of writing to you. I need not say how much I value your letter, you can feel that and even if it were possible that you did not, no words of mine would convey the consciousness to you:- the thanks which I owe you can only properly be acknowledged by an open & sincere reply and the absence of all conventional phrase. I wonder that with your high object, and with views, determinations and hopes consistent with it, all of which are justified by the mind and powers which you possess; which latter are not known to yourself only but, as I say in perfect simplicity, are now made fully manifest to others;- I wonder, that you should think as I believe you do of me. But whilst I wonder, and at the same time feel fully conscious of my true position amongst them that think, and know how unworthy I am of such estimation, I still receive it with gratitude from you, as much for the deep kindness as for that proportion of the praise which I may perhaps think myself entitled to; and which is the more valuable because of the worthiness of the giver.

That with your deep devotion to your object you will attain it I do not doubt. Not that I think your aspirations will not grow with your increasing state of knowledge and even faster than it:- but you must be continually passing from the known to the unknown, and the brightness of that which will become known as compared to the dullness or rather obscurity which now surrounds it; will be, and is worthy to be, your expected reward:- and though I may not live to see you attain even what your mind now desires, yet it will be a continually recurring thought in my imaginings, that, if you have life given you you will do so.

That I should rejoice to aid you in your purpose you cannot doubt; but nature is against you. You have all the confidence of unbaulked health & youth both in body & mind; I am a labourer of many years' standing made daily to feel my wearing out. You, with increasing acquisitions of knowledge, enlarge your views and intentions; I, though I may gain from day to day some little maturity of thought, feel the decay of powers, and am curtailing to a continual process of lessening my intentions and contracting my pursuits. Many a fair discovery stands before me in thought which I once intended, and even now desire, to work out; but I lose all hope respecting them, when I turn my thoughts to that one which is in hand³ and see how slowly, for want of time and physical powers, it advances, and how likely it is to be, not only a barrier between me & the many beyond in intellectual view, but even the last upon the list of those practically wrought out. Understand me in this:- I am not saying that my mind is wearing out; but those physico-mental faculties by which the mind and body are kept in conjunction and work together, and especially the memory, fail me; and hence a limitation of all that I was once able to perform into a much smaller extent than heretofore. It is this which has had a great effect in moulding portions of my later life, has tended to withdraw me from the communion & pursuits of men of science my contemporaries, has lessened the number of points of investigation, (that might at some time have become discoveries,) which I now pursue; and which, in conjunction with its effects, makes me say, most unwillingly, that I dare not undertake what you propose, to go with you through even my own experiments. You do not know, and should not now but that I have no concealment on this point from you, how often I have to go to my medical friend to speak of giddiness and reeling of the head &c, and how often he has to bid me cease from restless thoughts and mental occupation and retire to the seaside and to inaction.

If I were with you I could talk for hours of your letter and its contents, though it would do my head no good, for it is a most fertile source of thoughts to my mind; and whether we might differ upon this or that point or not I am sure we should not disagree. I should be glad to think that high mental powers insured something like a high moral sense, but have often⁴ been grieved to see the contrary as also on the other hand my spirit has been cheered by observing in some lowly & uninstructed creature such a healthful & honourable & dignified mind as made one in love with human nature. When that which is good mentally & morally meet in one being that that being is more fitted to work out & manifest the glory of God in the creation I fully admit[.]

You speak of religion & here you will be sadly disappointed in me. You will perhaps remember that I guessed & not very far aside your tendency in this respect. Your confidence in me claims in return mine to you which indeed I have no hesitation to give on fitting occasions but these I think are very few for in my mind religious conversation is generally in vain. There is no philosophy in my religion[.] I am of a very small & despised sect of christians known, if known at all, as Sandemanians and our hope is founded on the faith that is in Christ. But though the natural works of God can never by any possibility come in contradiction with the higher things that belong to our future existence, and must with every thing concerning Him ever glorify him still I do not think it at all necessary to tie the study of the natural sciences & religion together and in my intercourse with my fellow creatures that which is religious & that which is philosophical have ever been two distinct things[.]

And now my dear Lady I must conclude until I see you in town being indeed Your true and faithful Servant | M. Faraday