To William Francis   Sunday night! - and Monday morning long before day dawn!¹

Queenwood Sunday night! – and | monday morning long before day dawn!²

My Dear Francis,

your parcel with all the [recounted] contacts has reached me safely. thank you for Faraday.³ thank you for the magazine and thank you for the trouble you have taken about the Signature. To M^r Huxley pray present my best thanks.⁴

I have just read Donovan⁵ through – and while it is fresh in my mind I will set down what I think about it – I can now fancy some of the difficulties of editorial life – the impossibility to please all parties and still preserve the high standing of the magazine. M^r Donovan’s paper would be perused with great interest by the general reader, his style is exceedingly perspicuous and attractive. Besides he appears to be an old contributor; he has also won a prize at the Royal <Irish Ac>ademy;⁶ and I must say that I feel a certain shudder in pronouncing an adverse judgement on such a man. But what can I do – you have asked me for my opinion and of course expect me to give a conscientious one. I believe as regards the advancement of science that M^r D’s paper is of no value. Every practical man will look askance at such memoirs; It is very easy to imagine matter for such, though perhaps not so easy to throw them into the beautiful language which M^r Donovan appears to have at command – were there a dearth of matter – had you not your drawers already crammed with contributors <I should> say at once ‘insert it’; but I certainly think <your> space might be more valuably filled – all he has advanced could be said in one fourth of the words which he has used about it. He intends to publish more – would it not be well to request him to send in the whole? you might then propose a condensation of the affair and I am inclined to think you could reduce it as Brahma’s press⁷ reduces a pack of cotton – it is very porous! The term electric fluid is a kind of symbol by which we tie certain phenomena together, a kind of scaffolding for thought, to be removed when the solid masonry has been put together. My notion is that any attempt to parcel the fluid out into elementary constituents arises from an ignorance of the true aid which it renders to science. M^r Donovan appears to be not aware of the fact that Melloni has by means of the thermo-electric pile proved that the moon’s beams contain heat.⁸

Why does man seek for causes? <words missing> result of some unifying principle in human nature, – this principle has ever shewn itself and ever will shew itself, and it shews itself in M^r Donovan though he regrets it in theory, and would not hesitate to assign a distinct cause for every fact, thus forming as many causes as facts. Nearly the whole of his objections against ‘identity’ are answered by the assumption of different degrees of tension in expansive force in one and the same fluid. My advice would be to get all he has to say upon the subject said, and then propose this kind of smelting process; otherwise the thing is likely to be<words missing> of ‘linked sweetness long drawn out’⁹

With regard to D^r Woods I believe the fairest way of acting would be to print the whole matter as he proposes. If you tell me when you would like to have it I will send you a fair copy of the objections.¹⁰ I do not think that he has at all answered them. In fact he just argues as if I, not he, had proposed a theory. Even supposing that no single fact which I have adduced rests upon a certain foundation, the fact of their being generally received places the onus of positive disproof on D^r Woods, before he can ground his theory; but I apprehend that he will find some of the facts stubborn ones.

I have had some sweet imaginings over Reuben’s paper¹¹ – did you notice the hand? a woman’s, – perhaps his wife, perhaps his daughter, feeling a pride perhaps in her husbands or her father’s attainments as she transcribed his speculations Well Reuben appears to have a good deal of ingenuity <1-2 words missing> think on the whole his paper may be inserted when he modifies the following fundamental article of a portion of his scientific creed. In page 2 he says ‘Suppose a particle to be electrified by having positive electricity developed on one end and its equivalent of negative electricity on the other end, then however intense this polarisation may be the neutrality of the mass is perfect, because [of] the equality of the two opposite electric forces and the minuteness and independence of the particles’.¹² <1-2 words missing> minute and independent particles <so> endowed must take up a certain determinate arrangement dependent on the position of [their] poles¹³ Now this is exactly the state in which the molecules of a magnet are supposed to be. The magnet is not polarised as a whole, for break it in two and you have two perfect magnets, continue the subdivision down to the molecules and you will find them polarised. But the particles by no means neutralise each other so as to render the outward action of the magnet zero. In fact it has been mathematically demonstrated by Poisson, that a molecular polarization such as that assumed by M^r Phillips produces precisely the same effect as if free magnetism were distributed like an electric layer over the surface of the mass. I should undoubtedly expect a volume of hydrogen to affect the electrimeter if <its> particles were in a state of ‘intense polarization’ as assumed by M^r Phillips.

Furthermore it would be difficult to assign ‘independance’ to particles polarized as M^r P. supposes the particles of hydrogen to be; they ought to unite, the same force and disposition of force being present among themselves alone, as when chlorine is introduced among them.¹⁴

But in these speculations we should soon get into a region where no safe footing <2-3 words missing> my part I imagine that M^r Phillips’s un<doubted> ingenuity might be better expended than on mending these old theories – His remarks on abrasion appear to be of value; but his theoretic views of the polarity of atoms although they may be very useful to himself and may help him materially to a certain extent as keys to a certain number of phenomena do not appear likely to contribute much to the advancement of Science.

One word more as to M^r Donovan. The magazine has a commercial as well as a scientific aspect. I believe the paper would interest many who do not look far beneath the surface of things. Now I would make its insertion or noninsertion to depend upon the number of this class of readers which you may suppose the magazine to possess.

most truly yours | John Tyndall

D^r Francis | – – ¹⁵

over.¹⁶

Would you stick M^r Huxley’s address on the enclosed¹⁷ and send it to him for me? –Yours containing the note from M^r Sylvester reached me to day¹⁸ – all my difficulties are now surmounted – thanks to you for that same –¹⁹

I send you a ‘report’²⁰ and am not ashamed to say that it is a good one – I spent a good deal of time at it but have the satisfaction of believing that I now know as much of the real secrets of the matter as anybody that has written upon it. When I have time at disposal I hope to be able to bore a little deeper than any of them have yet done.

Woods’s private note²¹ accompanies this –

StBPL T&F, Authors’ letters