PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

CHAPTER I.

The position of Professor Tyndall in the world of science is somewhat unique. He is one of our most popular teachers of physical science; he is one of our most successful experimentalists; and he is one of our most attractive writers. By his discoveries he has largely extended our knowledge of the laws of Nature; by his teaching and writings he has probably done more than any other man in England to kindle a love of science among the masses; and by his life he has set an example to students of science which cannot be too widely known or appreciated. There are men who have made greater and more useful discoveries in science, but few have made more interesting discoveries. There are men whose achievements have been more highly esteemed by the devotees of pure science, but rarely has a scientific man been more popular outside the scientific world. There are men whose culture has been broader and deeper, but who have nevertheless lacked his facility of exposition and gracefulness of diction. The goddess of Science, which ofttimes was presented to the public with the repulsive severity of a skeleton, he has clothed with flesh and blood, making her countenance appear radiant with the glow of poesy, and susceptible even to a touch of human sympathy; while amongst scientific contemporaries, though he does not rank as one of those creative minds that mark an epoch in the history of physical philosophy, he may yet be said to have “built many a stone into the great fabric of science, which gives it an ever-broader support and an ever-growing height without its appearing to a fresh observer as a special and distinctive work due to the sole exertion of any one scientific man.” He commenced his scientific career at the time when Sir William Grove began to elaborate that theory of the co-relation of the physical sciences which Newton suspected and Faraday elucidated; namely, “that the various affections of matter, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and motion are all correlative or have a reciprocal dependence: that neither, taken abstractedly, can be said to be the essential or proximate cause of the others, but that either may, as a force, produce the others; thus heat may mediately produce electricity, electricity may produce heat; and so of the rest.” Professor Tyndall has extended or simplified our knowledge of these forces. Indeed he may be said to have revealed some hidden links in the chain of causation. He has extended and consolidated our knowledge of magnetism; as an explorer and discoverer in the domain of radiant heat he stands almost alone; and as a lecturer and experimentalist he has probably done more than any other man to popularise the science of electricity.

There is a growing tendency in the present day to appreciate personal achievement more highly than ancient lineage; and it is becoming more a matter of boast in the intellectual world to say that an eminent man was self-made than to say he was of noble birth. The subject of this memoir can boast both of high descent and of lowly birth. “I am distantly connected,” he says, “with one William Tyndale, who was rash enough to boast, and to make good his boast, that he would place an open Bible within reach of every ploughboy in England. His first reward was exile, and then a subterranean cell in the Castle of Vilvorden. It was a cold cell, and he humbly, but vainly, prayed for his coat to cover him and for his books to occupy him. In due time he was taken from the cell and set upright against a post. Round neck and post was placed a chain, which being cunningly twisted, the life was squeezed out of him. A bonfire was made of his body afterwards.”

It is said that the martyr Tyndale was descended from the ancient barons of Tyndale in Northumberland, whose title eventually passed into the family of the Percies, and that the said ancestors, leaving the north during the war of the Roses, afterwards sought and found refuge in Gloucestershire. Of one of these refugees the martyr of Vilvorden was the great-grandson, and was, it is believed, born in 1484. Both family tradition and documents show that some members of the Tyndale family, who were cloth manufacturers, migrated from Gloucestershire to the county of Wexford in Ireland about two centuries ago. One William Tyndale landed on the coast of Ireland in 1670, and his descendants in later years became scattered over Wexford, Waterford, and Carlow. Their fortunes varied; but for our purpose it is sufficient to know that the grandfather of the Professor had a small estate in Wexford; and that on removing thence to the village of Leighlin Bridge on the banks of the Barrow, county Carlow, he continued to prosper until he got into easy circumstances. But throughout the whole race of Tyndale, from the Martyr down to the Professor, intellectual independence appears to have been preferred to worldly independence, and it was the exercise of this trait that cost the Professor the small patrimony which his grandfather had acquired. A high sense of rectitude and a benevolent disposition are not incompatible with excessive susceptibility to opposition; and hence persons of high principles sometimes stand like adamant on points that to worldly minds appear too trifling even for controversy, much less for self-sacrifice. Though the opinions of the Tyndales may have differed, the leading principles that governed their conduct appear to have been maintained with remarkable consistency and self-denial. John Tyndale, the father of the Professor, differed in opinion with his own father, William Tyndale of Leighlin Bridge, on some point that has long since been forgotten, but in consequence of that difference William revoked his will in favour of his first-born son, John, and left his property to two sons of a second marriage.

Leighlin Bridge, where John Tyndall was born in humble circumstances in 1820, was a thriving town of 2,000 inhabitants, forty-six miles south-west of Dublin. It was then the entrepot where the great southern road from Dublin to Waterford and Cork crossed the Barrow, and it has consequently been declining ever since the development of the railway system diverted the traffic. It was not destitute of historical associations, which to the Irish mind were of an exciting character. Nor was the country destitute of natural attractions. When Tyndall was a youth its general aspect was described as soft and agreeable, with little of forcible or imposing scenery, yet free from those harsh features which so frequently mar the effect of Irish landscape. In some parts it so closely resembled the “champaign, ornate, and agreeable districts of central England,” that it was said constantly to remind an English traveller passing through the country of the “equable, grateful scenery, the calm and soft-faced prettiness of territorial view to which his mind had been accustomed.”

Yet to the ordinary English reader its loneliness would appear to have little that was likely to fire the opening mind of the Apostle of Physical Science. It need not, however, appear an inauspicious birthplace to those who believe that it is no mere accident that has made great enthusiasts generally proceed from lonely or sterile countries.

Let us therefore look a little more into this home from which so much light was to be reflected in after years by its then youngest inhabitant. The Professor’s father, being left dependent on his own resources, early joined the Irish Constabulary force and remained in it for several years. He was regarded as a man of exceptional ability and unswerving integrity, and was respected by all who knew him. A sturdy politician and a zealous Orangeman, he preserved as a precious relic a bit of flag which was said to have fluttered at the Battle of the Boyne. In such a man Protestantism was no mere hereditary faith. It was evolved from his own inner consciousness, and was part of his intellectual being. His earnest and capacious mind had mastered the works of Tillotson, Jeremy Taylor, Chillingworth, and other writers who were not only the pillars of the Protestant faith, but still remain unsurpassed as masters of English prose. In our own day men of respectable theological attainments are content to reflect, in lunar-like scintillations, the intellectual splendour, the massive diction, the rich and glowing periods that adorn their pages; and no better evidence could be given of the fine intelligence of John Tyndall, of Leighlin Bridge, than to say that his delight was in the works of these great men. It is the fashion nowadays for critics of the “newspaper” school to sneer at their “pompous grandeur,” but it is those living writers who in elevation of thought and graces of style show the greatest affinity to them that are the most popular. It was with such works that John Tyndall, père, sought to imbue the mind of his only surviving son; and the subtle thoughts and inspiring sentiments which he gathered from such classic ground must have had an invigorating effect on his son’s susceptible mind. Besides his early familiarity with the works of these powerful thinkers, it is said that he soon knew the Bible almost by heart. This species of intellectual discipline has sometimes been pointed to as presenting a strange contrast with his excursions in later life into those regions of natural philosophy which have sometimes been regarded as antagonistic to theology. But it is more than probable that this early training did much to model and chasten the rich, transparent, simple language in which he has so beautifully expounded the laws of Nature. There is high authority for saying that he could have had no better model. Alexander von Humboldt, after reviewing the whole course of ancient literature for “images reflected by the external world on the imagination,” says that “as descriptions of nature the writings of the Old Testament are a faithful reflection of the character of the country in which they were composed, of the alternations of barrenness and fruitfulness, and of the Alpine forests by which the land of Palestine was characterised. The epic or historical narratives are marked by a graceful simplicity, almost more unadorned than those of Herodotus, and most true to nature. Their lyrical poetry is more adorned, and develops a rich and animated conception of the life of nature. It might almost be said that one single psalm (the 104th) represents the image of the whole cosmos.... The meteorological processes which take place in the atmosphere, the formation and solution of vapour, according to the changing direction of the wind, the play of its colours, the generation of hail, and the rolling thunder are described with individualising accuracy, and many questions are propounded which we in our present state of physical knowledge may indeed be able to express under more scientific definitions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily.” Most of our great writers have acknowledged that the literature that first made a lasting impression on their mind materially influenced their style of writing, and in the writings of Professor Tyndall will be found a good deal of the beautiful simplicity and poetic feeling which abound in Hebrew literature.

The origin of his love of nature is a problem that has exercised his own mind. “I have sometimes tried,” he says, “to trace the genesis of the interest which I take in fine scenery. It cannot be wholly due to my early associations; for as a boy I loved nature, and hence to account for that love of nature I must fall back upon something earlier than my own birth. The forgotten associations of a foregone ancestry are probably the most potent elements in the feeling.” He then accepts as exceedingly likely Mr. Herbert Spencer’s idea that the mental habits and pleasurable activities of preceding generations had descended with considerable force to him. He has, indeed, repeatedly supported the view that intellectual character is largely formed from ancestral peculiarities; and if that be so, he may surely be said to have reproduced some of the higher mental characteristics of the Irish race with marvellous exactness. “In the Celtic genius,” says Michelet, “there is a feeling repugnant to mysticism, and which hardens itself against the mild and winning word, refusing to lose itself in the bosom of the moral God. The genius of the Celts is powerfully urged towards the material and natural; and this proneness to the material has hindered them from easily acceding to laws founded on an abstract notion.... In the seventh century St. Columbanus said: ‘The Irish are better astronomers than the Romans.’ It was a disciple of his, also an Irishman, Virgil, Bishop of Saltzburg, who first affirmed the rotundity of the earth and the existence of the Antipodes. All the sciences were at this period cultivated with much renown in the Scotch and Irish monasteries.” These characteristics appear to predominate in the Irish intellect at the present day. Physical science, which is the glory of our age, owes much to Ireland. Sir William Thomson, one of the most versatile and brilliant of natural philosophers, was born in Ireland; so was George Gabriel Stokes, one of Newton’s worthiest successors in the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge as well as President of the Royal Society; Henry Smith, the greatest mathematician of his time at Oxford, who died in 1883, was an Irishman; Sir William Rowan Hamilton, the Astronomer-Royal for Ireland, was also one of Ireland’s most precocious sons; and in such a constellation of Irish genius Professor Tyndall excels as a popular expositor of the laws of nature.

At the age of seven he began to show his natural taste for the works of nature, and his father gave him glowing accounts of the achievements of Newton as

A good education was the only patrimony which his father could bestow upon him. He was therefore sent to the best school within reach, and remained at it till his nineteenth year. In his earlier schooldays he preferred physical to mental exercises, and thus became expert in running, swimming, climbing, and other sports. The branch of study in which he excelled was mathematics. Under the tuition of a good teacher in an Irish national school, he acquired a knowledge of elementary algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and conic sections. His favourite “arithmetic” was the treatise of Professor Thomson, the father of Sir William Thomson, who in later years became one of his most brilliant contemporaries. At the age of seventeen he showed exceptional facility in solving geometrical problems, and on his way home from school, in company with his teacher, he would work out demonstrations on the snow in winter. But even that accessory he became able to dispense with; for he could so clearly present the relations of space to his mind without the aid of diagrams, that he was able to draw mentally the lines illustrating the solution of complex problems and to preserve this mental image so distinctly that he could reason upon it as correctly as on the diagrams drawn upon paper required by ordinary students. When he came to solid geometry he was able by means of this power of mental representation to dispense with models, which to other students were indispensable.

His powers of reasoning were not confined to mathematics. In his youth he was accustomed to debate with his father the points of doctrine that divide the Protestant from the Roman Catholic Church, reasoning high “of Providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate.” Sometimes the son took the Protestant side and at other times the Romish side; and in either case he showed much dialectical skill and theological knowledge. He also took more than ordinary interest in the study of English grammar, which he has described as being to his youthful mind a discipline of the highest value and a source of unfailing delight.

Leaving school in April, 1839, he joined a division of the Ordnance Survey then stationed in that district, under the command of Lieut. Geo. Wynne, of the Royal Engineers, who afterwards became an intimate friend of his, and to whom he has frequently expressed his obligation for acts of kindness that promoted his welfare in after life. About that time a good deal of astonishment was publicly expressed at the mathematical powers of one of the many boys employed in calculations on the Ordnance Survey; his name was Alexander Gwin, a native of Derry, and it was reported that at the age of eight years he had got by rote the fractional logarithms from 1 to 1,000, which he could repeat in regular rotation, or otherwise. His rapidity and correctness in calculating trigonometrical distances, triangles, &c., were extraordinary: he could make a return, in acres, roods, and perches, in less than one minute of any quantity of land, on receiving the surveyor’s chained distances; a calculation which the greatest arithmetician would take nearly an hour to do, and would not be so sure of accuracy at the end of that time.

The intention of young Tyndall was to become a civil engineer, which then appeared a most attractive profession to him. As a preliminary qualification he determined to master all the operations of the surveyors. Draftsmen being the best paid, he worked as a draftsman, but applied himself so well to learning the whole business that he soon became able to do the work of the computor, the surveyor, and the trigonometrical observer. He then asked to be allowed to go on field-work, and his desire was granted. In 1841, while he was stationed at Cork, a circumstance occurred which may be described as the turning point in his career. He worked at mapping in company with a gentleman, who, assuming a paternal interest in him, one day, asked the young and promising surveyor how he employed his leisure hours. Dissatisfied with the account given, the gentleman said to him: “You have five hours a day at your disposal, and this time ought to be devoted to study. Had I, when I was your age, had a friend to advise me as I now advise you, instead of being in my present subordinate position, I should be the equal of the director of the Survey.” Pregnant words! Next morning young Tyndall was at his books by five o’clock, and the studious habits then commenced he continued for twelve years.

Next year he was in Preston, and there becoming a member of the Preston Mechanics’ Institute he attended its lectures and made use of its library. One experiment which he saw there he never forgot. In a lecture on respiration, Surgeon Cortess showed the changes produced by the passage of air through the lungs, and in order to illustrate the fact that what went in as free oxygen came out in carbonic acid, he forced his breath through lime water in a flask by means of a glass tube dipped into it; the carbonic acid from the lungs converted the dissolved lime into carbonate of lime, which being practically insoluble was precipitated. All this, he says, was predicted beforehand by the lecturer, “but the delight with which I saw this prediction fulfilled by the conversion of the limpid lime-water into a turbid mixture of chalk and water remains with me as a memory to the present hour” (1884.)

His diligence in study he was soon able to turn to good account. On one occasion there was a dearth of men capable of making trigonometrical observations when such observations were required. Tyndall offered his services in that department; but the offer was not readily accepted. His superiors hesitated to intrust him with a theodolite on account of his inexperience in work of that description: and indeed there were bets made against his chances of success. However, being allowed to try his hand at it, he at once took his theodolite into an open field, where he examined all its parts, and studied their uses. He then made the trigonometrical observations prescribed to him, and when they were compared with the measurement previously made on a larger scale, his work was pronounced to have been successfully done. When he quitted the Ordnance Survey in 1843 he had practically mastered all its operations.

The pay upon the Ordnance Survey, however, was very small, but having ulterior objects in view, he considered the instruction received as some set-off to the smallness of the pay. In order to “prevent some young men from considering their fate specially hard, or from being daunted, because from a very low level they had to climb a very steep hill,” he has stated that on quitting the Ordnance Survey in 1843, his salary was a little under twenty shillings a week, adding, “I have often wondered since at the amount of genuine happiness which a young fellow, of regular habits, not caring for either pipe or mug, may extract even from pay like that.”

In 1844 affairs in this country did not look very tempting to him, and he therefore resolved to go to America, whither some relatives had emigrated early in the century. He had actually made preparations for going there before some of his friends succeeded in dissuading him from it. A sudden outburst of activity in railway construction at the same time opened up a brighter prospect at home. After a pause, he says, there came the mad time of the railway mania, when he was able to turn to account the knowledge he had gained upon the Ordnance Survey; in Staffordshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Durham, and Yorkshire especially, he was in the thick of the fray.

As a workman at that period he has been highly spoken of by his contemporaries. One of them has stated that “Extreme caution and accuracy, together with dauntless perseverance under difficulties, characterised the performance of every piece of work he took in hand. Habitually, indeed, he pushed verification beyond the limits of all ordinary prudence, and, on returning from a hard day’s work, he has been known to retrace his steps for miles in order to assure himself of the security of some ‘bench mark,’ upon whose permanence the accuracy of his levels depended. Previous to one of those unpostponable thirtieths of November, when all railway plans and sections had to be deposited at the Board of Works, a series of levels had to be completed near Keighley in Yorkshire, and Manchester reached before midnight. The weather was stormy beyond description; levelling staves snapped in twain before the violent gusts of wind; and level and leveller were in constant peril of being overturned by the force of the hurricane. Assistants grumbled ‘Impossible,’ and were only shamed into submissive persistence by that stern resolution which, before nightfall, triumphed over all obstacles.”