Faraday to William Charles Henry   2 August 1853¹

Royal Institution | 2 Aug 1853

My dear Dr. Henry

I have only three letters of Dalton² which I send you³: but let me have them again for they belong to a Portrait book⁴. In old time I was accustomed to destroy letters so that many do not remain with me of anybodys[.]

I do not know that I am unorthodox as respect the atomic hypothesis. I believe in matter & its atoms as freely as most people at least I think so. As to the little solid particles which are by some supposed to exist independent of the forces of matter and which in different substances are imagined to have different amounts of these forces associated with or conferred upon them (and which even in the same substance when in the solid liquid & gaseous state are supposed to have like different proportions of these powers) as I cannot form any idea of them apart from the forces so I neither admit nor deny them. They do not afford me the least help in my endeavour to form an idea of a particle of matter[.] On the contrary they greatly embarras[s] me for after taking account of all the properties of matter and allowing in any considerations for them then these nuclei remain on the mind & I cannot tell what to do with them. The notion of a solid nucleus without properties is a natural figure or stepping stone to the mind at its first entrance on the consideration of natural phenomena; but when it has become instructed the like notion of a solid nucleus apart from the repulsion which gives our only notions of solidity or the gravity which gives our notion of weight is to me too difficult for comprehension and so the notion becomes to me hypothetical & what is more very clumsy hypothesis[.] At that point then I reserve my mind as I feel bound to do in hundreds of other cases in natural knowledge.

I have published nothing on the matter save the old Speculation⁵[.]

With many thanks for your kind invitation I am My dear Dr. Henry | Yours truly | M. Faraday