"But besides that, and as a matter of reward and encouragement to those who have not yet risen to great distinction, I think the Government should, in the very many cases which come before it having a relation to scientific knowledge, employ men who pursue science, provided they are also men of business. This is perhaps now done to some extent, but to nothing like the degree which is practicable with advantage to all parties. The right means cannot have occurred to a Government which has not yet learned to approach and distinguish the class as a whole. * * *
Sometimes people's views on these matters change when the despised distinction is actually offered, but it was not so with him; for once, when indirectly sounded as to whether a knighthood would be acceptable, he declined the honour, preferring to "remain plain Michael Faraday to the last."
In this day, when so many allow their names to be used for offices of which they never intended to discharge the duties, the following letter may convey an appropriate lesson:--
"I cannot be on the committee; I avoid everything of that kind, that I may keep my stupid mind a little clear. As to being on a committee and not working, that is worse still. * *
It is well known that he waged implacable war with the Spiritualists. Eighteen years ago tables took to spinning mysteriously under the fingers of ladies and gentlemen who sat or stood around the animated furniture; much was said about a new force, much too about strange revelations from another sphere, but Faraday made a simple apparatus which convinced him and most others that the tables moved through the unconscious pressure of the hands that touched them. The account of this will be found in the _Athenæum_ of July 2, 1853. Three weeks afterwards he wrote to his friend Schönbein: "I have not been at work except in turning the tables upon the table-turners, nor should I have done that, but that so many inquiries poured in upon me, that I thought it better to stop the inpouring flood by letting all know at once what my views and thoughts were. What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened,--what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man! How full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities it is!" But the believers in these occult phenomena, some of them holding high positions about the Court, would not let him alone; and there are many indications of the annoyance and irritation they caused him. He declined to meet the professors of the mysterious art, and the following letter will serve to show the way in which he regarded them:--