But while there may be a question as to the existence of precocity in the young lad, there does not appear to be any reason for believing that his unusual abilities were the result of direct heredity.  His father, an ordinary journeyman blacksmith, never exhibited any special intellectual ability, though possibly poverty and poor health may have been responsible for this failure.  His mother, too, it appears, was of but ordinary mentality.

The environment of those early years—­that is, from 1804 to 1813, while in the book-binding business—­was far from calculated to develop any marked abilities inherent in our young philosopher.  What would seem less calculated to inspire a wish to obtain a deeper insight into the mysteries of the physical world than the trade of book-binding, especially in the case of a boy whose scholastic education ceased at fourteen years and was limited to the mere rudiments of learning?  But, fortunately for the world, the inquiring spirit of the lad led him to examine the inside of the books he bound, and thus, by familiarizing himself with their contents, he received the inspiration that good writing is always ready to bestow on those who properly read it.  Two books, he afterwards informs us, proved of especial benefit; namely, “Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry,” already referred to, and the “Encyclopaedia Britannica.”  To the former he attributes his grounding in chemistry, and to the latter his first ideas in electricity, in both of which studies he excelled in after years.  As we have seen, even at this early age he followed the true plan for the physical investigator, cross-questioned all statements, only admitting those to the dignity of facts whose truth he had established by careful experimentation.

But our future experimental philosopher has not as yet fairly started on the beginnings of his life-work.  The possibilities of the book-binding trade were too limited to permit much real progress.  A circumstance occurred in the spring of 1812 that shaped his entire after-life.  This was the opportunity then afforded him to attend four of the last lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, by the great Sir Humphry Davy.  Faraday took copious notes of these lectures, carefully wrote them out, and bound them in a small quarto volume.  It was this volume, which he afterwards sent to Davy, that resulted in his receiving, on March 1, 1813, the appointment of laboratory assistant in the Royal Institution.  His pay for this work was twenty-five shillings a week, with a lodging on the top floor of the Institute, a very fair compensation for the times.