Faraday to Arthur-Auguste De La Rive   29 May 1854

Royal Institution | 29 May 1854

My dear friend

Though feeling weary & tired I cannot resist any longer conveying to you my sincere thanks (however feebly) for the gift of your work in French¹. I have delayed doing so for some time hoping to be in better spirits but will delay no longer, for delighted as I have been in the reading of it, my treacherous memory begins to let loose that which I gained from it:- for when I read some of the summaries a second time, I am surprised to find them there & then slowly find that I had read them before[.] The power with which you hold the numerous parts of our great department of science in your mind is to me most astonishing & delightful and the accounts you give of the researches of the workers & especially those of Germany exceedingly valuable & interesting to me. May you long enjoy & use this great power for the good of us all. We shall long for the second volume but we must have patience for it is a great work that you are engaged in[.]

You sent me also the Numbers of the Bibliotheque for January February & March & there again your kindness to me is deeply manifested & with me is deeply felt: but do not trouble yourself to send me the succeeding numbers for I have the work here & see it with great interest for it is to me a channel for much matter that otherwise would escape me altogether. I wish I could send you matter oftener, but my wishes far outmeasure my ability. My portfolio contains many plans for work but I get tired with ordinary occupation & then my hands lie idle.

Your theoretical views from p. 557² and onwards have interested me very deeply and I am glad to place them in my mind by the side of those ideas which serve to aid discovery & development by suggesting analogies and crucial experiments and other forms of test for the views which arise in the mind as vague shadows however they may develope into brightness. I have always a great difficulty about hypotheses from the necessity one is under of holding them loosely & suspending the mental decision. I do not know whether I am right in concluding that your hypothesis supposes that there can only be a few atoms in each molecule and that these are arranged as a disc or at all events disc fashion i.e in the same plane it seems to me that if we consider a molecule in its three dimensions it will be necessary to consider the atoms as all having their axis in planes parallel to one only of these directions however numerous these atoms may be. I speak of course of those bodies which you consider as naturally magnetic p 571³. Perhaps when I get my head a little clearer I may be able to see more clearly the probable arrangements of many atoms in one molecule. But for the present I must refrain from thinking about it[.]

Our united kindest remembrances

Ever My dear friend | Your faithful | M. Faraday

Proff Aug de la Rive | &c &c &c

Address: A Professor | August de la Rive | &c &c &c &c | à Geneva | Switzerland.