IRLF

Q

OX THE

LIFE AND CHARACTER

OF

JOSEPH HENEY

READ BEFORE THE

'HILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

.1 A M E.S C. WELL] ISTG

October 26, 1878.

WASHINGTON:

188

:r'ion & Co.

ON THE

LIFE AND CHARACTER

OF

JOSEPH HENRY

HEAD BEFORE THE

PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. •

BY

JAMES C. WELLING,

:

October 26, 1878.

Second ]Bc3.±'t±oxi.«

WASHINGTON:

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

1880.

[RE-PRINTED FROM THE HENRY MEMORIAL VOLUME PUBLISHED BY
ORDER OF CONGRESS.]

THE LIFE AND CHAEACTEE

OF

JOSEPH HENRY.*

BY

JAMES C. WELLING, LL.D.,

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY.

JOSEPH HEXRY was born in Albany, X. Y., on the 17th of
December, 1799. His grandparents on both his father's and
mother's side emigrated from Scotland, and landed in this country
on the 16th of June, 1775, the day before the battle of Bunker's
Hill. At the age of seven or earlier, for what reason is unknown,
he went to live with his maternal grand mother/ who resided at
Galway, in the county of Saratoga, X. V., and his father having
died soon afterward, he continued to dwell for years under her roof.
At Galway he attended the district school, of which one Israel
Phelps was the master, and having there learned" the rudiments
of an English education, he was placed at the early age of ten in
a store kept in the village by a Mr. Broderick. Receiving from
his employer every token of kindness, and, indeed, of paternal
interest in his welfare, the boy-clerk, already remarkable for his
handsome visage, his slender figure, his delicate complexion, and
his vivacious temper, became a great favorite with his comrades,
who, according to the customs of the village store, were wont to
saunter about the door in summer, and to gather round the stove
in winter, for the interchange of such trivial gossip as pertains to
village life. Though released at this time for the half of each day
from the duty of waiting in the store that he might attend the
sessions of the common school in the afternoon, it does not appear
that he had as yet evinced any taste for books, notwithstanding the

*Kead before the "Philosophical Society of Washington," October 26, 1878.
n»lJ,-tin of the Phil. foe. W. vol. ii. p. 203.)

(3)

562049

HENRY.

fact, as lie afterwards recalled, that his young brain was even then
troubled at times with the " malady of thought/' as he lost himself
in the mazes of revery or speculation about God and creation —
"those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things/' which
the philosophical poet of England has described as the natural
misgivings of a "creature moving about in worlds not realized."
"Delight and liberty/7 as was natural to a bright boy in the full
flush of his animal spirits, still remained the simple creed of his
childhood, until one day his pet rabbit escaped from its warren
and ran into an opening in the foundation of the village church.
Finding the hole sufficiently large to admit of pushing his person
through it, he followed on all fours in eager pursuit of the fugitive,
when his eyes were attracted in a certain direction by a glimmer
of light, and groping his way toward it, beneath the church, he
discovered that it proceeded from a crevice which led into the vesti-
bule of the building, and which opened immediately behind a
book-case that had been placed in the vestibule, as the depository of
the village library. Working his way to the front of the book-case,
he found himself in the presence of all the literature stored on its
shelves, and on his taking down the first book which struck his eye,
it proved to be Brooke's Fool of Quality, a work of fiction in
which views of practical life and traits of mystical piety are artfully
blended, insomuch that even John Wesley was inclined to except
it from the auto-da-fe which, after the manner of the curate and
barber in the story of Don Quixote, he would have gladly per-
formed upon the less edifying products of the novel-writing imagi-
nation. Poring over the pages of this fascinating volume, young
Henry forgot the rabbit in quest of which he had crept beneath
the church. It was the first book he had ever read with zest,
because it was the first book he had ever read at the impulse of his
"own sweet will." Mrs. Browning has told us that we get no
good from a book by being ungenerous with it, by calculating
profits — "'so much help by so much reading."

- "It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a hook's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth—'
"Pis then we get the right good from a book."

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 5

Such was the "soul-forward, headlong plunge" which the boyish
Henry now first took in the waters of romance, rendered only the
sweeter to him, it may be, because, without affront to innocence,
they took the flavor of "stolen waters" from the stealth with which
they were imbibed. From that time forth he made frequent visits
to this library, by the same tortuous and underground passage,
reading by preference only works of fiction, the contents of which
he retailed to listening comrades around the stove by night, until,
in the end, his patron, who shared in his taste for such "light
reading," procured for him the right of access to the library in the
regular way, and no longer by the narrow fissure in the rear of the
book-case.

At the age of fifteen he left the store of Mr. Broderick in
Gal way, and, returning to the place of his birth, entered a watch-
maker's establishment in Albany, but finding nothing congenial to
his taste in the new pursuit, he soon abandoned it. At this time he
had formed a strong predilection for the stage. Two or three years
before, while living at Galway, he had seen a play for the first time,
on the occasion of a casual visit to Albany, and the impression it
made upon his mind was as vivid as that left by the perusal of his
first novel. He described and re-enacted its scenes for the wonder-
ment of the Galway youth, and now that he was living in Albany
he could give full vent to his new inclination. His spare money
was all spent in theatrical amusements, until at length he won his
way behind the scenes, and procured admission to the green room,
where he learned how to put a play on the boards and how to pro-
duce the illusion of stage effects. In the skill with which he learned
thus early to handle the apparatus of the stage we may discern,
perhaps, the first faint prelude of the skill to which he subsequently
attained in handling the levers and screws with which, according to
Goethe, the experimental philosopher seeks to extort from nature the
revelation of her mysteries.

Invited at this period of his life to join a private theatrical
association in Albany, known by the name of "The Rostrum," the
young enthusiast soon distinguished himself among his fellow-mem-
bers of riper years by the ingenuity of his dramatic combinations
and the felicity of his scenic effects, insomuch that he was made

6 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

President of the Society. Meanwhile, the watchmaker had left-
Albany, and young Henry, no longer having the fear of the
silversmith's file and crucible before his eyes, was left free to follow
the lead of his dramatic tastes and aspirations. He dramatized a
tale, and prepared a comedy; both of which were acted by the
association. Indeed, so much was he absorbed in this new vocation
that our amateur Roscius seemed, according to all outward appear-
ance, in a fair way of making a place for himself among the
" periwig-pated fellows who tear a passion to tatters" on the stage;
or, at the best, of taking rank with the great dramatic artists who,
standing in front of the garish foot-lights, "hold the mirror up
to nature7' in a sense far different from that of the experimental
philosopher, standing in the clear beams of that lumen siccum which
Bacon has praised as the light that is best of all for the eyes of
the mind. But in the midst of these disguises, under which the
unique and original genius of Henry has thus far seemed to be
masquerading, we have now come to the time when his mind under-
went a great transfiguration, which revealed its native brightness,
and a transfiguration as sudden as it was great.

Minds richly endowed, if started at first in a wrong direction,
may sometimes have, it would seem, an intellectual conversion as
marked as that moral conversion which is often visible in the lives
of great saints. It certainly was so in the case of Henry. Over-
taken in the sixteenth year of his age by a slight accident, which
detained him for a season within doors, he chanced, in search of
mentat diversion, to cast his eyes upon a book which a Scotch gentle-
man, boarding with his mother, had left upon the table in his
chamber. It was Dr. Gregory's Lectures on Experimental Phi-
losophy, Astronomy, and Chemistry. It commences with an address
to the young reader, in which the author stimulates him to deeper
inquiry concerning the familiar objects around him. " You throw
a stone," he says, "or shoot an arrow upwards into the air; why
does it not go forward in the air, and in the direction you give it ?
What force is it that presses it down to the earth ? Why does
flame or smoke always mount upward ? You look into a clear well
of water, and see your own face and figure, as if painted there;
-why is this? You are told it is done by reflection of light. But

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 7

what is reflection of light?" etc., etc. These queries certainly are
very far from representing the prudens qucestio of Bacon in even
its most elementary form, but they opened to the mind of young
Henry an entirely " new world of thought and enjoyment." His
attention was enchained by this book as it had not been enchained by
the fiction of Brooke or by the phantasmagoria of the drama.*
The book did for him what the spirits did for Faust when they
opened his eyes to see the sign of the macrocosm, and summoned
him "to unveil the powers of nature lying all around him." Not
more effectual was the call which came to St. Augustine, when, as
he lay beneath the shadow of the fig-tree, weeping in the bitterness
of a contrite soul, he seemed to hear a voice that said to him : " Tolle,
lege; tolle, lege" and at the sound of which he turned away forever
from the Ten Predicaments of Aristotle, and all the books of the
rhetoricians, to follow what seemed to him the "lively oracles of
God." Xo sooner had Henry recovered from his sickness, than,
obedient to the new vision of life and duty which had dawned upon
him, he summoned his comrades of "the Rostrum" to meet him in
conference, formally resigned the office of President, and, in a vale-
dictory address, announced to his associates that, subordinating the
pleasures of literature to the acquisition of serious knowledge, he
had determined henceforth to consecrate his life to arduous and
solid studies.

There are doubtless those wrho, in the retrospect of Professor
Henry's youth, as contrasted with the rich flower and fruitage of his
riper years, will please themselves with curious speculations on what
" might have been," if his rabbit had never slipped its inclosure, if
there had been no crack in the wall behind the book-case, or if
Gregory's Lectures had never fallen in his way at the critical

*He soon became so much interested in this book that its owner gave it to him,
and in token of the epoch it had marked in his life, Professor Henry ever after-
wards preserved it among the choicest memorials of his boyhood. In the fly-leaf
of the book the following memorandum is found, written in the year 1837: This
book, although by no means a profound work, has, under Providence, exerted a
remarkable influence on my life. It accidently fell into my hands when I was about
sixteen years old, and was the first book that I ever read with attention. It opened
to me a new world of thought and enjoyment; invested things before almost
unnoticed with the highest interest; fixed my mind on the study of nature, and
caused me to resolve at the time of reading it that I would immediately commence
to devote my life to the acquisition of knowledge.— J. H.

8 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

juncture of his life, much as the great mind of Pascal pleased
itself with musing how the fate of Europe might have been changed
if the Providential grain of sand in Cromwell's tissue had not
sent him to a premature grave; or how the whole face of the earth
would have been changed if the nose of Cleopatra had been a
little shorter than it was, and so had marred the beauty of face which
made her, like another Helen, the teterrima causa belli for a whole
generation. Such fanciful speculations are well calculated to import
into the philosophy of human life, and into the philosophy of human
history, a theory of causation which is as superficial as it is false.
As honest Horatio says to Hamlet in the play, when the latter
proposes to trace the noble dust of Alexander the Great, in imagi-
nation, until perchance it may be found stopping a bung-hole, one
feels like saying in the presence of such fine-spun speculations,
"Twere to consider too curiously to consider so." The strong
intellectual forces which are organic in a great mind, as the strong
moral and political forces which are organic in society, do not depend
for their evolution, or for their grand cyclical movements, on the
casual vicissitudes which ripple the surface of human life and affairs.
To argue in this wise is to mistake occasion for cause, and by con-
founding what is transient and incidental with what is permanent
and pervasive, is to make the noblest life, with its destined ends and
ways, the mere creature of accident, and is to convert human history,
with its great secular developments, into the fortuitous rattle and
chance combinations of the kaleidoscope. We may be sure that
Henry was too great a man to have lived and died without making
his mark on the age in which his lot was cast, whatever should have
been the time, place, or circumstance which was to disclose the color
and complexion of his destiny. The strong, clear mind, like the
crystal, takes its shape and pressure from the play of the constituent
forces within it, and is not the sport of casual influences that come
from without.

Armed, however, with his new enthusiasm, the nascent philoso-
pher hastened to join a night school in Albany, but soon exhausted
the lore of its master. Encountering next a peripatetic teacher of
ish grammar, he became, under the pedagogue's drill, so versed
in the arts of orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, that

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING.

IK- started out himself on a grammatical tour through the provincial
districts of New York, and returning from this first field of his
triumphs as a teacher, he entered the Albany Academy (then in
charge of Dr. T. Rorneyn Beck) as a pupil in its more advanced
studies. Meanwhile, in order to upay his way" in the academy,
he sought employment as a teacher in a neighboring district school,
this being, as he afterwards was wont to say, the only office he had
ever sought in his life; and in this office he succeeded so well that
his salary was raised from $8 for the first month to the munificent
sum of §15 for the second month of his service! From pupil in
the academy and teacher of the district school, he was soon pro-
moted to the rank of assistant in the academy, and henceforward
had ample means for the further prosecution of his studies. Leav-
ing the academy, he next accepted the post of private tutor in the
family of the patroon in Albany, Mr. S. Van Rensselaer; and,
devoting his leisure hours to the study of the higher mathematics,
in conjunction with chemistry, physiology, and anatomy, he at this
time purposed to enter the medical profession, and had made some
advances in this direction, when he was called, in the year 1826, to
embark in a surveying expedition, set on foot under the auspices of
the State government of New York, for the purpose of laying out
a road through the southern tier of counties in that State. Starting
with his men at West Point, and going through the woods to Lake
Erie, he acquitted himself so well in this expedition that his friends
endeavored to procure for him a permanent appointment as captain
of an engineering corps, which it was proposed to create for the
prosecution of other internal improvement schemes, but the bill
projected for this purpose having fallen through, Mr. Henry
again accepted, though with some reluctance, a vacant chair which
was oifered him in the Albany Academy.

In connection with the duties of this chair, he ftow commenced
a series of original experiments in natural philosophy -»- the first
connected series which had been prosecuted in this country. Dr.
Hare, indeed, had already invented the compound blowpipe, as
Franklin before him, by his brilliant but desultory labors, had
given an immense impulse to the science of electricity; yet none
the less is it true that regular and systematic investigations, designed

10 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

to push forward the boundaries of knowledge abreast with the
scientific workers of Europe, had hardly been attempted at that :
time in the United States.

The achievements of Henry in this direction soon began to win
for him an increase of reputation as well as an increase of knowl-
edge; but in the midst of the fervors which had come to quicken
his genius, he was visited by the fancy (or was it a fact?) that a
few of the friends who had hitherto supported him in his high
ambition were now beginning to look a little less warmly on his
aspirations. Suffering from this source the mental depression
which was natural to a sensitive spirit, no less remarkable for its
modesty than for its merit, he found solace in the friendly words
of good cheer and hopefulness addressed to him by Mr. William
Dunlap.* While one day making, with Mr. Henry, a trip down
the Hudson River on board the same steamboat, Mr. Dunlap
observed in the young teacher's face the marks of sadness, and, on
learning its cause, he laid his hand affectionately on Henry's
shoulder, and closed some reassuring advice with the prophetic
words, "Albany will one day be proud of her son." The presage
was destined to be abundantly confirmed. Soon afterward came
the call to Princeton College, and, because of the wider career it
opened to him, the call was as grateful to Henry as its acceptance
was gratifying to the friends of that institution. And shortly
before this promotion a new happiness had come to crown his life
in his marriage to the excellent lady who still survives him.

He entered upon the duties of his new post in the month of
November, 1832, and bringing with him a budding reputation,
which soon blossomed into the highest scientific fame, he became
the pride and ornament of the Princeton Faculty. The prestige
of his magnets attracted students from all parts of the country;
but the magnetism of the man was better far than any work of
his cunning hand or fertile brain. It was in Princeton, as he
was afterward wont to say, that he spent the happiest days of
his life, and they were also among the most fruitful in scientific

*This Mr. Dunlap had been the manager of the Park Theatre in New York,
and combined \vith his dramatic vocation the pursuits of literature and the
painter's art. He wrote the " History of Arts and Designs in the United States," a
work which was esteemed a standard one at the date of its first publication in ls.54.

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 11

» li-n. very. Leaving the record of his particular achievements at
this epoch to be told by Mr. Taylor, who is so well qualified to
do them justice, I beg leave only to refer to this period in the
career of Professor Henry as that in which it was my good for-
tune to come, for the first time, under the personal influence of the
great philosophical scholar, who, after being my teacher in science
during the days of my college novitiate at Princeton, continued
during the whole of his subsequent life to honor me with a friend-
ship which was as much my support in every emergency that called
for counsel and guidance as it was at all times my joy and the
'•rown of my rejoicing.

In the year 1847, when Professor Henry was in the forty-eighth
year of his age, he was unanimously elected by the Regents of the
Smithsonian Institution as its Secretary, or Director. At that time
the institution existed only in name, under the organic act passed by
Congress for its incorporation, in order to give effect to the bequest
of James Smithson, Esq., of London, who by his last will and
testament had given the whole of his property to the United States
to found at Washington, under the name of the "Smithsonian Insti-
tution/' an establishment for "the increase and diffusion of knowl-
edge among men." It does not need to be said that Professor
Henry did not seek this appointment. It came to him unsolicited,
but it came to him from the Board of Regents not only by the free
choice of its members, but also at the suggestion and with the
approval of European men of science, like Sir David Brewster,
Faraday, and Arago, as also of American scientific men, like Bache
and Silliman and Hare. I well remember to have heard the late
George M. Dallas (a member of the constituent Board of Regents
by virtue of his office as Vice-President of the United States)
make the remark on a public occasion, immediately after the elec-
tion of Professor Henry as Director of the Smithsonian Institution,
that the Board had not had the slightest hesitation in tendering
the appointment to him "as being peerless among the recognized
heads of American science.'7

At the invitation of the Regents he drew up an outline plan of
the Institution, and the plan was adopted by them on the 1 3th of

12 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

December, 1847. The members of this Society, living, as they do,
beneath the shadow of the great Institution to which Smithson
worthily gave his name and his estate, but of which Henry was at
once the organizing brain and the directing hand from the date of
its inception down to the day of his death, do not need that I should
sketch for them the theory on which it was projected by its first
Secretary, or that I should rehearse in detail the long chronicle of
the useful and multiform services which in pursuit of that theory it
has rendered to the cause of science and of human progress. And,
moreover, in doing so I should here again imprudently trench on the
province assigned to my learned colleague. But I may be allowed
to portray the method and spirit which he brought to the duties of
this exacting post, at least so far as to say that he proved himself
as great in administration as he was great in original research ; as
skilful in directing the scientific labors of others as he was skilful
in the conduct of his own. Seizing, as with an intuitive eye, the
peculiar genius of an institution which was appointed to " increase
knowledge" and to "diffuse19 it "among men," he touched the
springs of scientific inquiry at a thousand points in the wide domain
of modern thought, and made the results of that inquiry accessible
to all with a catholicity as broad as the civilized world. And the
publications of the Smithsonian Institution, valuable as they are,
and replete as they are with contributions to human knowledge,
represent the least part of his manifold labors in connection with the
Institution. His correspondence was immense, covering the whole
field of existing knowledge, and ranging, in the persons addressed,
from the genuine scientific scholar in all parts of the world to the
last putative discoverer of perpetual motion, or the last embryo
mathematician who supposed himself to have squared the circle.

In accepting a post where he was called by virtue of his office to
promote the labors of other men rather than his own, Professor
Henry distinctly saw that he was renouncing for himself the paths
of scientific glory on which he had entered so auspiciously at Albany
and Princeton. He once said to me, in one of the self-revealing
moods in which he sometimes unbosomed himself to his intimate
friends, that in accepting the office of Smithsonian Secretary he was
conscious that he had "sacrificed future fame to present reputation."

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 13

He was in the habit of recalling that Newton had made no dis-
coveries after he was appointed Warden of the Mint in 1695,* and
the remark is historically accurate, unless we should incline with
Biot, against the better opinion of Sir David Brewster, to place
after that date the " discoveries " which Newton supposed himself
to have made in the Scriptural chronology and in the interpretation
of the Apocalypse — discoveries which, whenever made, provoked
the theological scoff, as they perhaps deserved the theological criti-
cism, of the polemical Bishop Warburton. Yet, having convinced
himself that it was a duty he owed to the cause of science to sink
his own personality in the impersonal institution he was called to
conduct, Henry never paused for an instant to confer with flesh
and blood, but moved "right onward" in the path of duty, with
only the more of steadfastness because he felt that it was for him a
path of sacrifice.

How sedulously he strove to maintain the Institution in the high
vocation to which he believed it was appointed no less by a sacred
regard for the will of its founder than by an intelligent zeal for the
promotion of human welfare, is known to you all. And the suc-
cess with which he resisted all schemes for the impoverishment of the
exalted function, it was fitted to perform in the service of abstract
science, is a tribute at once to his rare executive skill and to the
native force of character which made him a tower of strength against
the clamors of popular ignorance and the assaults of charlatanism.
Whatever might be the consequences to himself personally, he was
determined to magnify its vocation and make it honorable. And
hence I do not permit myself to doubt that during the long period
of his administration as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
covering a period of thirty years, he has impressed upon its conduct
a definite direction which his successors will be proud to maintain,
not simply in reverence for the memory of their illustrious prede-
cessor, but also in grateful recognition of the fruitful works which,

*The effect of the Wardenship on Newton's scientific labors may be seen in the
warmth with which he rebuked Flamsteed for purposing to publish, in 1698, the
fact that Newton was then engaged on a revision of the Horroxian theory of the
moon. Newton wrote: "I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less
to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things, or to be thought
by our own people to be trifling au'dii //*.'/ time when I should be about the King's bust-

14 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

in the pursuit of his enlightened plans, will continue to follow him
now that he has rested from his labors.

The rest into which he has entered came to him in a green old
age, after a life as full of years as it was full of honors. He was
not only blest with an old age which was

serene and bright,

And lovely as a Lapland night,

but he also had that which, according to the great dramatist, should
accompany old age — "As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends/'
And the manner of his death was in perfect keeping with the man-
ner of his life. Assured for months before the inevitable hour came
that his days on earth were numbered, he made no change in his
daily official employments, no change in his social and literary diver-
sions. None was needed. Surprise, I learn, has been expressed
that in the full prospect of death he should have " talked" so little
about it. But the surprise is quite unfounded. Professor Henry
was little in' the habit of talking about himself at any time. Yet
to his intimate friends he spoke freely and calmly about his ap-
proaching end. Two weeks before he died he said to one such, a
gentleman from New York, to whom he was strongly attached : " I
may die at any moment. I would like to live long enough to com-
plete some things I have undertaken, but I am content to go. I
have had a happy life, and I hope I have been able to do some
good.'7 In an hour's conversation which I had with him six days
before he died, he referred to the imminence of his death with the
same philosophic and Christian composure. And perfectly aware
as he was, on the day before he died, and on the day of his death,
that he had already entered the Dark Valley, he feared no evil as
he looked across it, but, poised in a sweet serenity, preserved his
soul in patience, at an equal remove from rapture on the one hand
or anything like dismay on the other. For his friends he had even
then the same benignant smile, the same warm pressure of the hand,
and the same affable words as of yore. With the astronomer, New-
<*>mb, he pleasantly and intelligently discoursed about the then
recent transit of Mercury — not unheedful of the great transit he
was making, but giving heed none the less to every opportunity for
the inquiry of truth. Toward the attendants watching around his

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 15

couch he was as observant as ever of all the "small sweet courtesies"
which marked consideration for others rather than for himself
even in the supreme moment of his dissolution. The disciples of
Socrates recalled, with a sort of pathetic wonder at the calm and
intrepid spirit of their dying master, that as the chill of the fatal
hemlock was stealing toward his heart, he uncovered his face to ask
that Crito should acquit him of a small debt he owed to ^Escula-
pius ; and so in like manner I recall that our beloved chief did not
forget in the hour of his last agony to make provision for the due
dispatch of a letter of courtesy, which on 'the day before he had
promised to a British stranger.

And so in the full possession of all his great mental powers — in
his waking hours filled with high thoughts and with a peace which
passed all understanding; in his sleep stealing away

"To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell,''

and talking even there of experiments in sound on board the steamer
Mistletoe, or haply taking note of electric charges sent through im-
aginary wires at his bidding,* — the soul of Joseph Henry passed
awav from the earth which he had blessed and brightened by his
presence, f

From these imperfect notes on the life of Professor Henry I
pass to consider some of his traits and characteristics as a man.

He was endowed with a physical organization in which the ele-
ments were not only fine and finely mixed, but were cast in a mould
remarkable for its symmetry and manly beauty. The perfection of
his "outward man" was not unworthy of the "inward man" whom
it enshrined, and if, as a church father has phrased it, "the human
soul is the true Shechinah," it may none the less be said that the
human body never appears to so much advantage as when, trans-
figured by this Shechinah, it offers to the informing spirit a temple
which is as stately as it is pure. AVhen Dr. Bentley was called to
write the epitaph of Cotes, (that brilliant scholar of whom Newton

* Professor Henry took great delight in the acoustical researches which, during
the closing years of his life, he made at sea on board the steamer Mistletoe, while it
was in electricity that he won his first triumphs as a scientific man. That his first
love and last passion in science still filled his thoughts in his dying moments was
attested by the words which even then fell from his lips, in sleep.

tHe died ten minutes after twelve o'clock, on -the 13th of May, 1878.

16 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

said that "if he had lived we might have known something,'5)
the accomplished master of words thought it not unmeet to record
that the fallen Professor, who had been snatched away by a pre-
mature death, was only "the more attractive and lovely because
the virtues and graces which he joined to the highest repute for
learning were embellished by a handsome person." The same tribute
of admiration might be paid with equal justice to the revered Pro-
fessor whose "good gray head" has just vanished from our sight.

The fascination of Professor Henry's manner was felt by all
who came within the range of its influence — by men with whom he
daily consorted in business, in college halls, and in the scientific
academy; by brilliant women of society who, in his gracious pres-
ence, owned the spell of a masculine mind which none the less was
feminine in the delicacy of its perceptions and the purity of its sensi-
bilities; by children, who saw in the simplicity of his unspoiled
nature a geniality and a kindliness which were akin to their own.
A French thinker has said that in proportion as one has more intel-
lectuality he finds that there are more men who possess original
qualities. It was the breadth and catholicity of Henry's intelligence
which enabled him to find something unique and characteristic in
persons who were flat, stale, and unprofitable to the average mind.

Gifted with a mental constitution which was "feelingly alive to
each fine impulse," he possessed a high degree of aesthetic sensibility
to the beautiful in nature and in art. It cannot be doubted that a
too exclusive addiction to the analytic and microscopic study of
nature, at the instance of science, has a tendency to blunt in some
minds a delicate perception for the "large livingness" of Nature,
considered as a source of poetic and moral inspiration, but no such
tendency could be discovered in the intellectual habitudes of Pro-
fessor Henry. To a mind long nurtured by arts of close and crit-
ical inquiry into the logic of natural law he none the less united a
heart which was ever ready to leap with joy at "the wonder and
bloom of the world." When on the occasion of his first visit to
England, in the year 1837, he was travelling by night in a stage-
coach through Salisbury Plain, he hired the driver to stop, while
all his fellow-passengers were asleep, that he might have the privi-
lege of inspecting the ruins of Stoneheiige, as seen by moonlight,

DISCOURSE OF Dll. J. ('. AVET.LI N« -. 17

and brought away a weird sen.se of mystery which followed him in
all his after life. At a later day, in the year 1870, after visiting
the Aar Glacier, the scene of Professor Agassiz's well-known labors,
he crossed over the mountain to the Rhone Valley, until, at a sudden
turn of the road, he came full in the presence of the majestic Glacier
of the Rhone. For minutes he stood silent and motionless; then,
turning to the daughter who stood by his side, he exclaimed, with
the tears running down his cheeks: "This is a place to die in. We
should go no further."

And as he rejoiced in natural scenery so also was he charmed with
the beauties of art, and felt as much at home in the atelier of the
painter or sculptor as in the laboratory of the chemist or the appa-
ratus room of the natural philosopher, and exulted as sincerely in
the Louvre or the Corcoran Gallery of Art as in the cabinet of the
mineralogist or the museum of the naturalist.

He was as remarkable for the simplicity of his nature as for the
breadth of his mind and the acumen of his intellect. Those who
analyze the nature and charm of simplicity in a great mind suppose
themselves to find the secret of both in the fact that simplicity,
allied with greatness, works its marvels with a sweet unconscious-
ness of its own superior excellence, and it works them with this
unconsciousness because it is greater than it knows. Talent does
what it can. Genius does what it must. And in this respect, as an
English writer has said, there is a great analogy between the highest
goodness and the highest genius; for under the influence of either,
the spirit of man may scatter light and splendor around it, without
admiring itself or seeking the admiration of others. And it was
in this sense that the simplicity of Henry's nature expressed itself
in acts of goodness and in acts of high intelligence with a spon-
taneity which hid from himself the transcendent virtue and dignity
of the work he was doing; and hence all his work was done with-
out the slightest taint of vanity or tarnish of self-complacency.

As might be expected, he was a fervent lover of the best litera-
ture. His acquaintance with the English poets was not only wide
but intimate. His memory was stored with choice passages, di-
dactic, sentimental, witty, and humorous, which he reproduced at
will on occasions when they were apt to his purpose. His famil-
2

18 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

iarity with fiction dated, as we have seen, from early boyhood,, and
in this fountain of the imagination he continued to find refreshment
for the "wear and tear" of the hard and continuous thought to
which he was addicted in the philosopher's study. His knowledge
of history was accurate, and it was not simply a knowledge of facts,
but a knowledge of facts as seen in the logical coherence and rational
explanation which make them the basis of historic generalization.
The genesis of the Greek civilization was a perpetual object of
interest to his speculative mind, as called to deal with the phenom-
ena of Grecian literature, art, philosophy, and polity.

He was a terse and forcible writer. If, as some have, said, it is
the perfection of style to be colorless, the style of Henry might
be likened to the purest amber, which, invisible itself, holds in clear
relief every object it envelops. Without having that fluent deliv-
ery which, according to the well-known comparison of Dean
Swift, is rarely characteristic of the fullest minds, he was none
the less a pleasing and effective speaker — the more effective be-
cause his words never outran his thought. We loved to think and
speak of him as "the Nestor of American Science/7 and if his
speech, like Nestor's, "flowed sweeter than honey," it was due to
the excellent quality of the matter rather than to any rhetorical
facility of manner.

He was blest with a happy temperament. He recorded in his
diary, as a matter of thanksgiving, that through the kindness of
Providence he was able to forget what had been painful in his past
experiences, and to remember only and enjoy that which had been
pleasurable. The same sentiment is expressed in one of his letters.
Radiant with this sunny temper, he was in his family circle a per-
petual benediction. And, in turn, he was greatly dependent on his
family for the sympathy and watch-care due in a thousand small
things to one who never " lost the childlike in the larger mind." His
domestic affections were not dwarfed by the exacting nature of his
official duties, his public cares, or his scientific vigils. He had none
of that solitary grandeur affected by isolated spirits who cannot
descend to the tears and smiles of this common world. He was never
so happy as when in his home he was communing with wife and chil-
dren around the family altar. He made them the confidants of all

DISCOURSE 01 DR. J. C. WELLINU. 19

his plans. He rehearsed to them his scientific experiments. He
reported to them the record of each day's adventures. He read
with them his favorite authors.* He entered with a gleeful spirit
into all their joys; with a sympathetic heart into all their sorrows.
And while thus faithful to the charities of home he was intensely
loyal to his friends, and found in their society the very cordial of
life. Gracious to all, he grappled some of them to his heart with
hooks of steel. The friendship, fed by a kindred love of elegant
letters, which still lends its mellow lustre to the names of Cicero
and Atticus, was not more beautiful than the friendship, fed by
kindred talents, kindred virtues, and kindred pursuits, which so
long united the late Dr. Bache and Professor Henry in the bonds
of a sacred brotherhood. And this was but one of the many similar
intimacies which came to embellish his long and useful career.

His sense of honor was delicate in the extreme. It was not only
that "chastity of honor which feels a stain like a wound," but at
the very suggestion of a stain it recoiled as instantly as the index
finger of Mr. Edison's tasimeter at the "suspicion" of heat. I
met him in 1847, when, soon after his election as Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution, he had just been chosen to succeed Dr.
Hare as Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department of the
University of Pennsylvania, at a salary double that which he was
to receive in Washington, and with half the year open to free
scientific investigation, because free from professional duties. It
was, he said, the post which, of all others, he could have desiderated
at that epoch in his scientific life, but his honor, he added, forbade
him to entertain, for a moment, the proposition of accepting it after

* The following extract from a diary, kept by one of his daughters, is descriptive
of his habits under this head : " Had father with us all the evening. I modelled his
profile in clay while he read Thomson's Seasons to us. In the earlier part of the
evening he seemed restless and depressed, but the influence of the poet drove away
the cloud, and then an expression of almost childlike sweetness rested on his lips,
singularly in contrast yet beautifully in harmony, with the intellect of the brow
above."

Or take this extract from the same diary: "We were all up until a late hour,
reading poetry with lather and mother, father being the reader. He attempted Cow-
per's Grave, by Mrs. Browning, but was too tender-hearted to finish the reading of
it. We then laughed over the Address to the Mummy, soared to heaven with Shel-
U-y's Skylark, roamed the forest with Bryant, culled flowers from other poetical
fields, and ended with Ta7n O'Shanter. I took for my task to recite a part of the
latter from memory, while father corrected, as if he were ' playing schoolmaster.' "

20 MEMORIAL, OF JOSEPH HENRY.

the obligations under which he had come to the interests repre-
sented by the Smithsonian Institution. At a later day, after he-
had entered on his duties in Washington, and found the position
environed with many difficulties, Mr. Calhoun came to him, and
urged his acceptance of a lucrative chair in a Southern college,
using as a ground of appeal the infelicities of his present post, arid
the prospect of failing at last to realize the high designs he had
projected for the management of the Smithsonian Institution,
Admitting that it might be greatly to his comfort and advantage
at that time to give up the Smithsonian, he declined at once to
consider the proposal that was made to him, on the ground that his
"honor was committed to the Institution." Whereupon Mr. Cal-
houn seized his hand and exclaimed, " Professor Henry, you are a
man after my own heart,"

When in 1853, and again in 1867, he was entreated by friends to
allow the use of his name in connection with a call to the Presi-
dency of Princeton College, the college of his love, and the scene of
his "happiest days/' he instantly turned away from the lure, as feel-
ing that he could not love the dear old college so much if he loved
not more the honor and duty which bound him to the establishment
in Washington, with which, for good or for evil, he had wedded his
name and fortune. And in all other concerns, from the greatest to
the least, he seemed like one

Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,
And guard the way of life from all offence,
Suffered or done.

The "Man of Ross," portrayed by the pencil of Pope, was not
more benevolent in heart or act than Professor Henry. His
bounty was large and free. The full soul mantled in his ( eyes at
every tale of woe, and the generous hand was quick to obey the
charitable impulses of his sympathetic nature. This benevolent
spirit ran like a silver cord through the tissue of his life, because it
was interwoven in the very warp and woof of his being, and
because it was kept in constant exercise. It appeared not only in
acts of kindness to the poor and afflicted, but interpenetrated his
whole demeanor, and informed all his conduct wherever he could
be helpful to a fellow-man. He did good to all as he had oppor-

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WKLLIM;. 21

tunity, from "the forlorn and shipwrecked brother/' who had
already failed in the voyage of life, to the adventurous young
mariner who sought his counsel and guidance for the successful
launching of his ship from its ways. Many are the young men,
who, in all parts of the land, could rise up to-day and call him
bii-sed, for the blessing he brought to them by the kind word
spoken and the kind deed done, each in its season.

Unselfishness was a fundamental trait in the character of Pro-
fessor Henry, and he made the same trait a fundamental one in
his conception of the philosopher's high calling. The work of sci-
entific inquiry was with him a labor of love, not simply because he
loved the labor, but because he hoped by it to advance the cause
of truth and promote the welfare of man. He never dreamed of
profiting by any discovery he made. He would not even have his
salary increased, so tenaciously did he hold to the Christ-like privi-
lege of living among men "as one that serveth." This was a
crown which he would let no man take from him. To the Govern-
ment he freely gave, in many spheres of public usefulness, all the
time he could spare from his official duties. And it was in one of
these subsidiary public labors, .as chairman of the Light-House
Board, that he contracted, as he believed, the disease which carried
him to the grave.

A sense of rectitude presided over all his thoughts and acts.
He had so trained his mind to right thinking, and his will to right
feeling and right doing, that this absolute rectitude became a part
of his intellectual as well as moral nature. Hence in his methods
of philosophizing he was incapable of sophistical reasoning. He
sat at the feet of nature with as much of candor as of humility,
never importing into his observations the pride of opinion, and
never yielding to the seductions of an overweening fancy. He
\vu- sober in his judgments. He made no hasty generalizations.
His mind seemed to turn on "the poles of truth."

I could not dwell with enough of emphasis on this crowning
grace of our beloved friend if I should seek to do full justice to
my conception of the completeness it gave to his beautiful character.
But h;r>pi'.v for me I need dwell upon it with only tnc k-.sa of
emphasis because it was the quality which, to use a French idiom,

22 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

"leaped into the eyes" of all who marked his walk and conversa-
tion. In the crystal depths of a nature like his, transparent in all
directions, we discern as well the felicity as the beauty of that habit
of mind which is begotten by the supreme love of Truth for her
own sake — a habit which is as much the condition of intellectual
earnestness, thoroughness, and veracity in penetrating to the reality
of things, as of moral honesty, frankness, sincerity, and truthful-
ness in dealing with our fellow-men. The great expounder of the
Nicomachean Ethics has taught us, and one of our own moralists
has amplified the golden thesis,* that high moral virtue implies the
habit of "just election" between right and wrong, and that to
attain this habit we need at once an intelligence which is impas-
sioned and an appetite which is reflective. And so in like manner
all high intellectual virtue implies a habit of just election between
truth and error — an election which men make, other things being
equal, according to the degree in which their minds are enamored
with the beauty of truth, as also in ' proportion to the degree in
which their appetencies for knowledge have been trained to be
reflective and cautious against the enticements of error. I never
knew a man who strove more earnestly than Henry to make this
just election between right and wrong, between truth and error, or
who was better equipped with a native faculty for making the wise
choice between them. He had brought his whole nature under the
dominion of truthfulness.

But while thus eager and honest in the pursuit of truth he had
nothing controversial in his temper. It was a favorite doctrine of
his that error of opinion could be most successfully combated, not
by the negative processes of direct attack, rousing the pride and
provoking the contumacy of its adherents, but rather by the affirm-
ative process of teaching, in meekness and love, the truth that is
naturally antagonistic to it. The King of Sweden and Norway
made him a Knight of St. Olaf, but St. Olaf 's thunderous way of
propagating Christianity — by battering down the idols of Norway
with Thor's own hammer — is not the way that his American
votary would have selected. There was nothing iconoclastic in
Henry's zeal for truth. He believed that there is in all truth a

*Dr. James H. Thorn well : Discourses on Truth.

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 23

self-evidencing quality, and a redemptive power which makes it at
once a potent and a remedial force in the world. Hence he never
descended to any of those controversies which, in the annals of
science, have sometimes made the odium stientifieum a species of
hatred quite as distinct, and quite as lively, too, as its more ancient
congener, the odium theologicum. When once it was sought to force
a controversy of this kind upon him, and when accusations were
made which seemed to affect his personal honor, as well as the gen-
uineness of his scientific claims, he referred the matter for adjudi-
cation to the Regents of the Smithsonian. Their investigation and
their report dispensed him from the necessity of self-defense. The
simple truth was his sufficient buckler. And this equanimity was not
simply the result of temperament. It sprang from the largeness of
his mind, as well as from the serious view he took of life and duty.
He was able to moderate his own opinions, because, in the ampli-
tude of his intellectual powers, he was able to be a moderator of
opinions in the scientific world. You all know with what felicity
and intellectual sympathy he presided over the deliberations of
this Society, composed as it is of independent scientific workers in
almost every department of modern research. Alike in the judicial
temper of his mind and in the wide range of his acquisitions he
was fitted to be, as Dante has said of Aristotle, "the master of those
who know."

And this power of his mind to assimilate knowledge of various
kinds naturally leads me to speak of his skill in imparting it. He
was a most successful educator. He had many other titles of honor
or office, but the title of Professor seemed to rank them all, for
everybody felt that he moved among men like one anointed with
the spirit and power of a great teacher. And he had philosophical
views of education, extending from its primary forms to its highest
culminations — from the discipline of the "doing faculties" in
childhood to the discipline of the "thinking faculties" in youth
and manhood. No student of his left the Albany Academy, in the
earlier period of his connection with that institution, without being
thoroughly drilled in the useful art of handling figures, for then
and there he taught the rudimental forms of arithmetic, not so
much by theory as by practice. No student of his left Princeton

24 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

College without being thoroughly drilled in the art of thinking as
applied to scientific problems, for then and there he was called to
indoctrinate his pupils in the rationale as well as in the results of
the inductive method. And I will venture to add that no intelli-
gent student of his at Princeton ever failed, in after life, to recogni/e
the useful place which hypothesis holds in labors directed to the
extension of science, or failed to discriminate between a working
hypothesis and a perfected theory.

Pausing for a moment at this stage in the analysis of Professor
Henry's mental and moral traits, I cannot omit to portray the
eifect produced on the observer by the happy combination under
which these traits were so grouped and confederated in his person
as to be mutual complements of each other. Far more significant
than any single quality of his mind, remarkable as some of his
qualities were, was the admirable equipoise which kept the forces
of his nature from all interference with the normal development
of an integral manhood. He was courtly in his manners, but it
was a courtliness which sprang from courtesy of heart, and had
no trace of affectation or artificiality; he was fastidious in his
literary and artistic tastes, but he had none of that dilettantism
which is "fine by defect and delicately weak;" he was imbued
with a simplicity of heart which left him absolutely without
guile, yet he was shrewd to protect himself against the arts of
the designing; he was severe in his sense of honor without being
censorious; benevolent yet inflexibly just; quick in perception yet
calm in judgment and patient of labor; tenacious of right without
being controversial ; benignant in his moral opinions yet never
selling the truth; endowed with a strong imagination yet evermore
making it the handmaid of his reason; a prince among men yet with-
out the slightest alloy of arrogance in the fine gold of his imperial
intellect; in a word, good in all his greatness, he was, at the same
time, great in all his goodness. Such are the limitations of human
excellence in most of its mortal exhibitions that transcendent powers
of mind, or magnificent displays of virtue exerted in a single direc-
tion, are often found to .owe their "-splendid enormity" to what
Isaac Taylor has called "the spoliation of some spurned and
forgotten qualities," whi'-h arc sacrificed in the pursuit of a pmlomi-

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 25

nant taste, or an overmastering ambition.* The " infirmities of
genius" often attest in their subjects the presence of a mental or
moral atrophy, which has hindered the full-orbed development of
one or more among their mental and moral powers. But in Pro-
fessor Henry no one quality of mind or heart seemed to be in
excess or deficiency as compared with the rest. All were fused
together into a compactness of structure and homogeneity of parts
which gave to each the strength and grace imparted by an organic
union. And hence, while he was great as a philosopher he was
greater as a man, for, laying as he did all the services of his scien-
tific life on the altar of a pure, complete, and dignified manhood,
we must hold that the altar which sanctified his gifts was greater
than even the costliest offerings he laid upon it.

It will not be expected that I should close this paper without
referring to the religious life and opinions of Professor Henry.
If in moral height and beauty he stood like the palm tree, tall,
erect, and symmetrical,- it is because a deep religious faith wras the
tap-root of his character. He was, on what he conceived to be
rational grounds, a thorough believer in theism. I do not think he
would have said, with Bacon, that he "had rather believe all the
fables in the Legend, the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this
universal frame is without a mind," for he would have held that in
questions of this kind we should ask not what we would "rather
believe," but what seems to be true on the best evidence before us.
He was in the habit of saying that, next to the belief in his own
existence, was his belief in the existence of other minds like his own,
and from these fixed, indisputable points, he reasoned, by analogy,
to the conclusion that there is an Almighty Mind pervading the uni-
verse. But when from the likeness between this Infinite Mind and
the finite minds made in His image, it was sought, by a priori logic,
or by any preconceived notions of man, to infer the methods of the
Divine working, or the final causes of things, he suspected at once
the intrusive presence of a false, as well as presumptuous, philo-

*The phrase, as originally applied by Taylor, is descriptive of certain incom-
plete ethical systems, but it is equally applicable to certain typical exemplifica-
tions of human character, in which "the strength and the materials of six parts
of morality have been brought together wherewith to construct a seventh part."

26 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY.

sophism, and declined to yield his mind an easy prey to its bland-
ishments. To his eyes much of the free and easy teleology, with
which an under-wise and not over-reverent sciolism is wont to
interpret the Divine counsels and judgments, seemed little better
than a Brocken phantom — the grotesque and distorted image of
its own authors projected on mist and cloud, and hence very far
from being the inscrutable teleology of Him whose glory it is to
conceal a thing, and whose ways are often past finding out, because
His understanding is infinite.

As Professor Henry was a believer in theism, so also was he a
believer in revealed religion — in Christianity. He had not made
a study of systematic, or of dogmatic, theology as they are taught
in the schools, and still less was the interest he took in polemical
divinity, but he did have a theology which, for practical life, is
worth them all — the theology of a profound religious experience.
He was a fresh illustration of Neander's favorite saying: Pectus
facit theologum. The adaptation of the Christian scheme to the
moral wants of the human soul was the palmary proof on which
he rested his faith in the superhuman origin of that scheme. The
plan had to him the force of a theory which is scientific in its exact
conformity to the moral facts it explains, when these facts are pro-
perly known and fully understood.

Hence he was little troubled with the modern conflict between
science and religion. History, as well as reason and faith, was here
his teacher. He saw that the Christian church had already passed
through many epochs of transition, and that the friction incident to
such transition periods had only brushed away the incrustations of
theological error and heightened the brightness of theological truth.
In a world where the different branches and departments of human
knowledge are not pushed forward pari passu — where " knowledge
comes but wisdom lingers" — he held it nothing strange that the
scientific man should sometimes be unintelligible to the theologian,
and the theologian unintelligible to the scientific man. He believed,
with the old Puritan, that "the Lord has more truth yet to break
out of His holy word" than the systematic theologian is always
ready to admit; and as the humble minister and interpreter of
nature he was certain that the scientific man has much truth to

DISCOURSE OF DR. J. C. WELLING. 27

learn of which he is not yet aware. There must needs be ferment-
ation in new thought as in new wine, but the vintage of the brain,
like the vintage of the grape, is only the better for a process which
brings impurities to the surface where they may be scummed off,
and settles the lees at the bottom, where they ought to be. It is
under the figure of a vintage that Bacon describes the crowning
result of a successful inductive process. When this process has
been completed in any direction, it remains for a wider critical and
reconciling philosophy to bring the other departments of knowl-
edge into logical relation and correspondence with the new outlook
that has been gained on nature and its phenomena.

Erasmus tells us in his Praise of Folly, mingling satire with
the truth of his criticism, that in order to understand the scholastic
theology of his day, it was necessary to spend six-and -thirty years
in the study of Aristotle's physics and of the doctrines of the
Scotists. What a purification of method has been wrought in
theology since the times of Erasmus! And for that purification
the Church is largely indebted to the methodology of modern sci-
ence, in clearing up the thoughts and rationalizing the intellectual
processes of men. The gain for sound theology is here unspeaka-
ble, and amply repays her for the heavy baggage she has dropped
by the way at the challenge of science — baggage which only im-
peded her march without reinforcing her artillery.

Hence, as a Christian philosopher, Professor Henry never found
it necessary to lower the scientific flag in order to conciliate an ob-
scurantist theology, and he never lowered the Christian flag in
order to conciliate those who would erect the scientific standard
over more territory than they have conquered. He had none of
that spirit which would rather be wrong with Plato than right
with anybody else. He wanted to follow wherever truth was in
the van. But better than most men I think he knew how to dis-
criminate between what a British scholar calls the duty of "follow-
ing truth wherever it leads us, and the duty of yielding to the
immediate pressure of an argument." He saw, as the same writer
adds, that for whole generations "the victory of argument may
sway backward and forward, like the fortune of single battles,"
but the victory of truth brings in peace, and a peace which conies

28 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HEXRY.

to stay. He swept the scene of conflict with the field-glass of a
commander-in-chief, and did not set up his trophies because of a
brilliant skirmish on the picket lines of science. But he believed
in the picket line, and rejoiced in every sharpshooter who fought
with loyalty to truth in the forefront of the scientific army.

A man of faith, Professor Henry was a man of prayer. But
his views of prayer were perhaps peculiar in their spirituality.
There was nothing mechanical or formal in his theory of this
religious exercise. He held that it was the duty and privilege of
enlightened Christians to live in perpetual communion with the
Almighty Spirit, and in this sense to pray without ceasing. Work
was worship, if conducted in this temper. He accepted all the
appointments of nature and Providence as the expressions of Infinite
Wisdom, and so in everything gave thanks.* He believed that
familiarity with the order of nature and scientific assurance of its
uniformity need not and should not tend to extinguish the instinct,
or abolish the motives of prayer by seeming to imply its futility,
but should rather tend to purify and exalt the objects of prayer.
The savage prays to his idol, that he may have success in killing his
enemies. The Hottentot whips and worships his fetich in blind but
eager quest of some sensual boon, that he may consume it upon
Ms lusts. The prayers of the Yedic Books are the childish prayers
of an unspiritual and childish people. "They pray," says Max
Mliller, "for the playthings of life, for houses and homes, for
cows and horses, and they plainly tell the gods that if they will
only be kind and gracious they will receive rich offerings in return."
And do we, asks the critic of comparative religions, we Christians

*The "sweet reasonableness" into which he had schooled his temper was mani-
fested by the great trial which befell him in the year 1865, when the Smithsonian
building suffered from the ravages of a fire which destroyed all the letters written
down to that date by Professor Henry, as Smithsonian Secretary, in reply to innu-
merable questions relating to almost every department of knowledge. Besides, the
Annual Report of the Institution in manuscript, nearly ready for the press, a valu-
able collection of papers on meteorology, with written memoranda of his own to aid
in their digest, and countless minutes of scientific researches which he purposed to
make, all perished in the flames. Yet he was more concerned about the loss of
I'.Nhop Johns'* library, which had been intrusted to his care, than about the loss of
his own papers and records. Referring to the latter in a note written to his friend,
Dr. Torrey, a fe\\- days after the fire, he held the following language: "A few years
a-o surh a . -annuity would have paraly/ed me for future efforts, but in my present
view of life I take it sis the dispensation of a kind and wise Providence, and trust that
it will work to my spiritual advantage."

DISCOURSE OF 3K. J. C. WELLIN<;. 20

of this nineteenth century, "do we do much otherwise/7 if regard
be had to the quality of our petitions? Professor Henry held
that it was both the duty and privilege of enlightened Christians to
"do much otherwise," by praying pre-eminently, if not exclusively,
for spiritual blessings. And hence he held that the highest natural
philosophy combines with the highest Christian faith to transfer the
religious thoughts, feelings, and aspirations of man more and more
from things seen to things unseen, and from things temporal to
things eternal. This view of his had nothing of quietism or of
mysticism in it. Still less was it the expression of an apathetic
stoicism. It was only the philosopher's way of praying to the great
All-Father, in the spirit of St. Augustine, "Da quod jubes, ctjube
quod vis"

I have made this reference to the opinions of Professor Henry
on the relations of science to religion, as also on the relations of
natural philosophy to prayer, not only for the light they shed on the
character of the man, but also for a reason which is peculiar to this
Society, and which it may be a matter of interest for you to know.
Immediately after his last unanimous election as the President of
our Society, he communicated to me his purpose to make the rela-
tions of science and religion, as also the true import of prayer, the
subject of his annual presidential address. He gave me an outline
of the views he intended to submit, and I have here given but a
brief fesume of them, according to my recollections of the colloquy,
which was only one of many similar conferences previously had on
the same high themes. He said that it would be, perhaps, the last time
he should ever be 'called to deliver a presidential address before the
Society he so much loved, and that he wished to speak as became
an humble patron of science, believing fully in her high mission,
and at the same time as an humble Christian, believing fully in the
fundamental truths of Revelation. That he was not able to fulfil
this purpose will be as much a source of regret to you as it is to me;
but when we compare the valediction which it was in his heart to
utter, with the peaceful end which came a few months later to crown
his days with the halo of a finished life, we may console ourselves
with the thought that no last words of his were needed to seal on
our hearts the lesson taught by his long and splendid career. Being
dead he yet speaketh.

30 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENKY.

It is, indeed, the shadow of a great affliction which his death has
cast upon our Society, but the light of his life pierces through the
darkness, and irradiates for us all the paths of duty and labor, of
honor and purity, of truth and righteousness, in which he walked
with an eye that never blenched, and a foot that never faltered. We
shall not see his face any more, beaming with gladness and with the
mild splendor of chastened intellect, but we shall feel his spiritual
presence whenever we meet in this hall. We shall never hear his
voice again, but its clear and gentle tones, as from yonder chair he
expounded to us the mysteries of nature, will re-echo in the chambers
of memory with only a deeper import, now that he has gone to join
the adead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule our spirits from
their urns.v

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