Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   20 February 1845

Royal Institution | 20 Feby 1845

My dear friend

I cannot call to mind whether I wrote to you last or whether yours to me still remains unanswered[.] In which things my memory becomes more & more treacherous[.] My impression is that I heard from you not very long ago - but now I cannot find the letter¹ - as I write it comes to my mind that I have sent it to Mr. Christie for the Royal Society - but the order of these events or the order of the matter contained in your letters & papers on Ozone I cannot remember. I have lately been reading the account you give in the Archives de l'Electricite² and am astonished as I read at the mass of concurrent evidence it is so great. Surely you must some day succeed in getting Ozone in quantity - it seems whilst reading as if you were every moment on the point of doing so. Yet when I want to recall & arrange the main facts & arguments I become altogether confused; my memory will not serve me and I really become dull sometimes to find how in this way I am left behind in the use & appreciation of what others have done[.] Unless there be some visible body before my eyes or some large fact appealing with force to the external senses & easy to be produced, to sustain by a sort of material evidence the existence of a thought the thought fades away and however much I may have endeavoured to measure out & fix my judgment at the time of receiving & considering the thought afterwards I fear to trust to the conclusion I have come to because the thought & the considerations in which it were founded have left me. It is only in this way I can account for the hesitation I have in making up my mind on many points of chemical philosophy which are now before the scientific world[.]

I have been at work these last 6 or 8 months on the condensation of gases - a very tangible subject giving very strong impressions of its nature & effects every now & then by an explosion though I have met with very few only two indeed and these rather expected & in some degree prepared for³. You will have seen the general result in the Annales de Chimie⁴ but I hope soon to send you the paper from the Philosophical Transactions⁵ that is if I can find a way to send it. I have been waiting to write to you that I might send you at the instant of doing so an account of the condensation of oxygen but as yet he will not yield though I have given him a pressure of 60 atmospheres at a temperature of 140˚ F. below 0˚; and now I must lay by the experiments for a while - for first I am not well having been confined almost entirely to my rooms for the last three weeks - next my head is becoming giddy with the continuance of the investigation - and finally I must prepare to lecture after Easter⁶. Yet I could not lay down all these things & amongst them my intention of writing to you without carrying the latter into effect though as you will see in a very imperfect manner[.] But that does not stop me. I do not expect to make my letters scientific communications for from the reasons I have given you they must ever be unsteady & doubtful in that respect my memory of the things thus to be spoken of being so - but I write them & especially to you my dear friend as kindly remembrances of good feeling and grateful expressions for encouragement & happiness communicated to me from minds having feelings akin to my own. With kindest remembrances to Mrs. Schoenbein & the growing flock

I am as Ever | Your faithful | M. Faraday

Dr Schoenbein | &c &c &c

Address: Dr. Schoenbein | &c &c &c | University | Bâle | on the Rhine