BIOGRAPIIICxVL MEMOiR OF JOSEPH HENRY. 149 



and Silliman, EemTick, and Torrcy urged liis acceptance of the new 

 position, and congratulated Princeton upon the acquisition. 



The professorship came to him unsought. In his hist address to one 

 of the learned societies over which he presided, Professor IIenry men- 

 tions that the various oflices of honor and responsibility which he then 

 held, nine in number, had all been pressed upon him ; that he never 

 occu])ied a position for which he had of his own v\ill and action been 

 made a candidate. It did not occur to him at that moment to make one 

 exception. When a pupil in Albauj^ Academy he once offered himself 

 as a teacher of a country district school. The school trustees thought 

 him too young, but took him on trial at eight dollars a month. At the 

 beginning of the second month they raised his pay to fifteen. 



At Princeton Professor IIeney found congenial companions and 

 duties well suited to his powers. Here he taught and investigated for 

 fourteen fruitful and happy years ; here he professed the faith that was 

 in him, entering into the couununion of the Presbyterian Church, in 

 which he and his ancestors were nurtured ; and here he developed what 

 might not have been expected — a genius for education. One could 

 count on his being a clear expositor, and his gifts for experimental illus- 

 tration and for devising apparatus had been already shown. But now, 

 as a college professor, the question how to educate came before him in 

 in a broader way. He appreciated, and he made his associates and 

 pupils appreciate, the excellence of natural philosophy for mental disci- 

 pline, for training at once both the observing and the reasoning faculties. 

 .V science which rises from the observation of the most familiar facts, 

 and the questioning of these by experiment, to the consideration of 

 causes, the ascertaining of laws, and to the most recondite conceptions 

 respecting the constitution of matter and the interplay of forces, offers 

 discipline to all the intellectual powers, and tasks the highest of them. 

 Professor He?<;ri^ taught not only the elementary facts and general 

 principles from a fresh survey of both, but also the methods of philo- 

 sophical investigation, and the steps bj' which the widest generaliza- 

 tions and the seemingly intangible conceptions of the higher physics 

 have been securely reached. He exercised his pupils in deducing par- 

 ticular results from admitted laws, and in then ascertaining whether 

 what was thus deduced actually occurred in nature ; and if not, why 

 not. Though very few of a college class might ever afterward under- 

 take a physical or chemical investigation, all would or should be con- 

 cerned in the acquisition of truth and its relations; and by knowing 



