29th April 1851.
My dear Tom
Your letter enclosing one from Faraday reached me today. 1 Prof. Knoblauch leaves for Marburg on Friday. I have not yet got to work so I cannot perhaps find a better time to write to you than just the present. Faraday’s letter is a long one and a very friendly one. I gave directions to Francis to send him a copy of the last paper on magnetism,2 this he says he has received but had read the paper in the magazine before he received it. With regard to the paper he says, ‘I am able fully to appreciate the value of the results which you have arrived at and it appears to me that they are exceedingly well established and of very great consequence’. At the end he writes thus3: – ‘As you say at the close of your letter, I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in 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 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 set an error right gives us a reward for our humility in being refreshed by an absolute advancement in knowledge’. This morning until 2 o’clock I have devoted to visiting, and have seen many of the great guns of science. I had an opportunity of making the celebrated experiment of du Bois Reymond, of exhibiting an electric current by the action of the muscles of my arm.4 I have been with Dove, Magnus, Riess, and Poggendorff. Magnus’ place5 is out of order just now but by Wednesday he will arrange a spot for me to work in. Knoblauch and myself are to spend Wednesday evening with Poggendorff. The day after I wrote to you6 my chest arrived – just in time sufficient to draw away coat and run to the ‘Physikalische Gesellschafft’.7 Du Bois Reymond is President and he delivered a short discourse on the decrease of force in a separated muscle. After him came a Lieutenant of infantry on the pendulum; at this time Knoblauch sidled over to me and said du Bois wishes you to deliver a ‘Vortrag’8 – Well, what was to be done? – I opened my eyes at first in astonishment, but as they were about to submit me to a vote of membership9 I thought it would look cowardly to back out of it, so I scratched my forehead for 5 minutes, gathered up my thoughts and delivered a short discourse on that water affair.10 They told me it was well done and quite fluent, but I felt myself tremendously fettered sometimes. This I think is the sum total of my life in Berlin since I wrote to you. I have been as yet to no place of amusement and have therefore nothing in that line to talk about, which of course you wont regret much. I enjoyed a speculative walk among the crowds yesterday evening very much. I managed to detach myself wholly from them and look at them as a beautiful picture swimming before my mind’s eye. During this time I saw more deeply into Fichte’s arguments11 than ever I did before. Noll’s apparent contentedness may be accounted for on the hypothesis that there is something out of him as well as that there is something in him – I speak only in the abstract. As regards myself I have only to say ‘thank God I am that I am’.12 Rest assured of it, Noll has his hours of shade as well as you, but he likes his work – he also likes to be liked by his patients and this is another inducement to attention. The summit of Noll’s wishes is to be respectable country doctor, with a comfortable fire-side and a wife, and I honour him for the practical way in which he prepares himself for the realization of that ideal. Nevertheless there are men in the world with whom I feel more sympathy than with Noll.
A messenger has just brought me a letter from Mr Edmondson it runs as follows: – […]13
I will write to Debus14 now and will send this off at the same time, the cost is all the same.
But the bowels, the bowels Tom! I have little faith in the injection method. I believe it is weakening even when it succeeds. I would strongly recommend application to Dixon in London.15 I would put this earnest question to you: shall I write to him? If so, send me his address. I apprehend some mawkish indecisive reply to this question, the bare anticipation of which half enrages me. Send me his address. You will find it at the end of the preface of the Fallacies of the Faculty16 which Noll has. | J.T.
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/127–128
LT Transcript Only
Your letter . . . Faraday: Hirst’s letter is missing but Tyndall kept Faraday’s letter (0477). He received both on 28 April (Journal, JT/2/6/52). Therefore this letter was started on 28 April. The 29 April date, is an LT date, and was probably the postmark date.
the last paper on magnetism: see letter 0464, n. 2.
he writes thus: the following extract is accurately quoted. Minor differences in punctuation may be errors in LT’s transcription of this letter or in JT’s transcription of Faraday’s letter (on which 0477 is based).
celebrated experiment … muscles of my arm: see also letter 0489 to Faraday, which suggests Tyndall made this experiment again shortly before leaving Berlin.
Magnus’ place: Magnus’s private laboratory was one of the best-equipped in Europe.
day after I wrote to you: 25 April, the day after letter 0479 (24 April).
Physikalische Gesellschafft: the Physical Society of Berlin, f. 1845, is now the oldest scientific society in Germany.
Vortrag: lecture; give a lecture.
vote of membership: the election could not have taken place at this meeting for Tyndall did not hear until over a week later that he had been elected (Journal entry of 11 May, covering 7-11 May, JT/2/13b/543).
that water affair: either air-bubbles in water, the topic of a short paper finished that morning (letter 0479, n. 6), or his earlier investigation into water-jets (see letter 0456, n. 1).
Fichte’s arguments: specific reference not identified. Tyndall read Fichte’s popular ethical works (for example, see journal entries for 25 July and 13 August 1848 (JT/2/13a/371 and 374)).
thank God I am that I am: this expresses Tyndall’s satisfaction that his ambitions, unlike Noll’s, were high. In an extreme assertion of his own free and independent identity Tyndall applied to himself the name by which God identified himself (Exodus 3:14: ‘And God said unto Moses, I am that I am’).
letter from Mr Edmondson … : letter 0478. The original letter is missing, but Tyndall copied it out in full in this letter to Hirst (which exists only in LT transcript form).
write to Debus: letter missing.
Dixon in London: Dickson (see n. 16 and letters 0482 and 0484).
Fallacies of the Faculty: Samuel Dickson, The Principles of the Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine with the Fallacies of the Faculty, in a Series of Lectures (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1845). The Preface ends with Dickson’s address: ‘28, Bolton Street, Piccadilly’.
Please cite as “Tyndall0480,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0480