My dear Tom,
Although you complain of illness the hand in which you directed your last note2 to me is a bold and vigourous one. I sincerely trust that your cold after having made so many migrations through your body will eventually communicate itself to the air. It has evidently an upward tendency – first the chest then the throat, then the jaws – let us pray that the next move may be right through the top of your head into the atmosphere above. Considering my relation to you I did not receive that intelligence or rather that hint at a distant possibility with any palpitation of heart – for in the first place I have had thoughts of the kind myself which came to nothing in the end and in the next, and by far the more important place, I have firm confidence that whenever you take the step it will not be unwisely taken – it will not be done in haste. I believe that whatever golden mists the affections may generate around you that your reason with eagle eye will still see through them and be the guide which you will follow. You give me credit for knowing how to read your remarks3 – and I give you the credit of being able to read mine and to distinguish what I have said from the advocacy of a small worldly prudence. It would be worth the world to me if I could in such a matter throw my heart and understanding into the same scale. For I hold that a man who cannot love is an incomplete man, but I also hold that to place an alliance of the kind upon a firm basis the understanding ought to be satisfied as well as the heart. And indeed I believe if these notions of yours ever ripen into realities it will have been a healthy growth from manly esteem and manly appreciation into manly love. I therefore do not fear, and at any given moment I am ready to give you my fatherly blessing.
Did I not believe it to be my duty to stand by my magnet at the present moment I would go over to you.4 I am bewildered again. A week ago I thought I knew something of magnetism, I now feel that I know nothing, and that nobody knows any thing about it. Perhaps this conviction of ignorance is the commencement of knowledge, as the Christians say the conviction of sin is the first step towards purification.5 At all events if I fail to get out of my difficulties it will not be through neglecting to make the attempt.
Faraday writes to me from the Isle of Wight.6 The following is a quotation from his letter.7 ‘I have left its8 science in very good keeping, and I am glad to hear you are at experiment: But how is the health? Not well I fear. I wish you would get yourself strong first and work afterwards. As for the fruits I am sure they will be good; for though I despond as for myself I do not for you. You are young, I am old. You are fresh in thought, I am exhausted in thought and little more than a thing of habits – but our subjects are so glorious that to work at them rejoices and encourages the feeblest – delights and enchants the strongest.’
To which I reply as follows:9– ‘Your last letter is to me in many respects more precious than “much fine gold”, but I have found difficulty in interpreting one phrase:– “though I despond as for myself.” I can only account for it on the supposition that nothing short of infinitude can satisfy the soul of man. When I look at the intellectual conquest which lies at your feet, and which, as I heard Verdet say last autumn in Paris, stands unequalled since the time of Newton, the attitude which presents itself to my mind as the natural one is that of a warrior who, after the day’s successful conflict, wipes his iron brow and looks with tranquil satisfaction upon the spoils of victory. With regard to my own feelings on the matter, I can only say that the ejaculation of Baalam would express the aspiration of my soul –
‘Let me die the death of such a worker!’
Goodbye Tom | Affectionately yours | John
The Royal Society has given me a hundred pounds to help me in my experiments.10
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/349
LT Typescript Only
[1 July 1854]: Tyndall did not date this letter but LT’s suggestion that it was ‘probly July 1’ is likely correct as it was written in response to letter 0949 from Hirst, dated 29 June.
your last note: letter 0949.
how to read your remarks: in letter 0949, Hirst suggested that Tyndall would ‘know how to read’ his cryptic remarks about Anna Martin.
over to you: Hirst was travelling throughout Ireland and was making his way to Tyndall’s birthplace of Leighlin Bridge (see letters 0949 and 0953).
as the Christians … first step towards purification: see Romans 3:20–22, on the idea of righteousness through faith.
Isle of Wight: Faraday and his wife were on holiday in the Isle of Wight (see letters 0945, n. 13; 0948; and 0950)
quotation from his letter: see letter 0948.
I have left its: LT notes: ‘(the Royal Institution)’.
I reply as follows: see letter 0950.
The Royal Society … in my experiments: see letter 0950, n. 14.
Please cite as “Tyndall0951,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on