Very congenial were the duties of the young assistant.  They were to keep clean the beloved apparatus of the lecturers, and to assist them in their demonstrations.  The new world thus opened was full of bright promise.  He keenly felt the deficiencies of his early education, and did his best to extend his learning, so that he might be able to make the most of his opportunities.  But what he perhaps appreciated the most was the inspiration he received from the great teacher Davy, who was then Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Laboratory of the Royal Institution; for Faraday assisted at Davy’s lectures, and in an humble way even aided his investigations, sharing the dangers arising from the explosion of the unstable substance, chloride of nitrogen, that Davy was then investigating.  Faraday has repeatedly acknowledged the debt owed to the inspiration of this teacher.  Davy also, in later life generously recognized, in his former assistant, a philosopher greater than himself.  As the renowned astronomer, Tycho Brahe, discovered in one of his pupils, John Kepler, an astronomer greater than the master, and as Bergman, the Swedish chemist, in a similar manner, discovered the greater chemist Scheele, so when Davy, in after years, was asked what he regarded as his greatest discovery, he briefly replied, “Michael Faraday.”

The task of the scientific historian, who endeavors honestly to record the progress of research, and to trace the influence of the work of some individual on the times in which he lived, is by no means an easy one; for, in scientific work one discovery frequently passes so insensibly into another that it is often difficult to know just where one stops and the other begins, and much difficulty constantly arises as to whom the credit should be given, when, as is too often the case, these discoveries are made by different individuals.  It is only when some great discovery stands alone, like a giant mountain peak against the clear sky, that it is comparatively easy to determine the extent and character of its influence on other discoveries, and justly to give the credit to whom the credit is due.  Such discoveries form ready points of reference in the intellectual horizon, and mark distinct eras in the world’s progress.  This is true of all work in the domain of physical science, but it is especially true in that of electricity and magnetism, in which Faraday was pre-eminent.  The scope of each of these sciences is so extended, the number of workers so great, and the applications to the practical arts so nearly innumerable, that it is often by no means an easy task correctly to trace their proper growth and development.