Sydenham Kent | July 19th 1853
“The errors of great men are the Triumph of dunces, and dunces alone” so says Theodore Parker2. I am precluded from uttering even a slight sneer at you for your slip about Table Turning3, but I confess I am not so lenient with those fools who jumped headlong into your mistake. Coleridge4 said a rogue was a fool with a circumbendibus5, a philosopher may be said to be a fool by simply turning him out of his wonted groove - a magnet has an atmosphere of its own playing round it spirally - is this so? is man a magnet? if so what lets but that atmosphere join’d with others in a circle might turn a table or anything in the vortex if you had ever read any of Swedenborgs6 works you wd not have miss’d your footing as you manifestly have done[.] I would rather you had been right, simple and unhark’d as I am[.] I have the means in my House of putting you to the blush, but philosophy is too proud to look in any direction, but its own[.]
I am Sir | Your very humble servant | Robert Espie Surgeon R.N.
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor (1835): Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London.
Please cite as “Faraday2701,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on