What has been the practical use of the labours of Faraday?
But I would again emphatically say, that his work needs no such justification, and that if he had allowed his vision to be disturbed by considerations regarding the practical use of his discoveries, those discoveries would never have been made by him.

'I have rather,' he writes in 1831, 'been desirous of discovering new facts and new relations dependent on magneto-electric induction, than of exalting the force of those already obtained; being assured that the latter would find their full development hereafter.' In 1817, when lecturing before a private society in London on the element chlorine, Faraday thus expressed himself with reference to this question of utility.

'Before leaving this subject, I will point out the history of this substance, as an answer to those who are in the habit of saying to every new fact.

"What is its use ?" Dr.Franklin says to such, "What is the use of an infant ?" The answer of the experimentalist is, "Endeavour to make it useful." When Scheele discovered this substance, it appeared to have no use; it was in its infancy and useless state, but having grown up to maturity, witness its powers, and see what endeavours to make it useful have done.' Footnote to Chapter 3 [1] I am indebted to a friend for the following exquisite morsel:--'A short time after the publication of Faraday's first researches in magneto-electricity, he attended the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, in 1832.

On this occasion he was requested by some of the authorities to repeat the celebrated experiment of eliciting a spark from a magnet, employing for this purpose the large magnet in the Ashmolean Museum.