Hastings 19th April 1851.
Dear Sir,
Whilst here resting for awhile I take the opportunity of thanking you for your letter of the 4th of February2 and also for the copy of the paper in the phil. Magazine3 which I have received. I had read the paper before and was very glad to have the development of your researches more at large than in your letter. Such papers as yours makes me feel more than ever the loss of memory I have sustained, for there is no reading them or at least retaining the argument under such a deficiency. Mathematical formulae more than any thing requires quickness and surety [in receiving and retaining the true value of the symbols used,]4 and whilst one has to look back at every moment to the beginning of a paper, to see what H or α or β mean there is no making way. Still though I cannot hold the whole tenor of reasoning in my mind at once I am fully able to appreciate the value of the results you arrive at, and it appears to me that they are exceedingly well established and of very great consequence. These elementary laws of action are of so much consequence in the development of the nature of a force which, like magnetism is as yet new to us.
My views with regard to the [cause of the]5 annual, diurnal, and other variations are not yet published though printed.6 The next part of the philosophical transactions will contain them. I am very sorry I am not able to send you a copy from those allowed to me, but I have had so many applications from those who had some degree of right that they are all gone. I only hope that when you see the Transactions you may find reason to think favourably of my hypotheses. Time does not lessen my confidence in the view I have taken but I trust when relieved from my present duties and somewhat stronger in health to add experimental results regarding oxygen so that the mathematicians may be able to take it up.
As you say in the close of your letter I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it – and I therefore hope and am fully persuaded that you are working. Nature is our kindest friend and best critic (exciter?)7 in experimental science if we only allow her intimations to fall unbiassed on our minds. nothing is so good as an experiment which whilst it sets an error right gives us a reward for our humility in being refreshed by an absolute advancement in knowledge8
I am my dear Sir | your very obliged and faithful Servant | M Faraday
Dr J. Tyndall | &c &c
RI MS JT/2/6/52–3
RI MS JT/TYP/12/41289
19 April: this letter, which Hirst forwarded from Marburg, took 9 days to reach Tyndall (see n. 9).
your letter … February: letter 0465 (in which Tyndall outlined his memoir on magnetism).
copy … I have received: presumably an offprint from the April issue of the Phil. Mag. in which Tyndall’s memoir on magnetism was published (cited letter 0464, n. 2). Tyndall had asked Francis to send a copy to Faraday (see letter 0480).
in receiving … symbols used: there is an ellipsis in Tyndall’s transcript; the passage is taken from the LT typescript (see n. 9 below).
cause of the: in LT transcript but not in JT transcript (see n. 9 below).
my views … not yet published though printed: appeared as ‘ERE 26’ and ‘ERE 27’, Phil. Trans., 141 (1851): 29–122.
(exciter?): Tyndall entered this option, showing that he was unsure of the reading. LT transcribed the word as ‘exciter’.
As you say … advancement in knowledge: Tyndall took these remarks by Faraday as an enormous compliment. He copied the paragraph into his next letter to Hirst (0480). He copied the entire letter into his journal (JT/2/6/52–3) on the day he received it (28 April).
RI … 4128: these two sources are both transcripts, the first by JT in his journal, the second by LT. Differences between them show that both were made from a missing original. We give priority to the JT version.
Please cite as “Tyndall0477,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0477