332 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



Range of information. It was not alone in those physical 

 branches of knowledge to which he had made direct original con- 

 tributions, that the mental activities of Henry were familiarly 

 exercised and conspicuously exhibited. There was scarcely a 

 department of intellectual pursuit in which he did not feel and 

 manifest a sympathetic interest, and in which he did not follow with 

 appreciative grasp its leading generalizations. Holding ever to the 

 unity of Nature as the expression and most direct illustration of the 

 Unity of its Author, he believed that every new fact discovered in 

 any of nature's fields, would ultimately be found to be in intimate 

 correlation with the laws prevailing in other fields seemingly the 

 most distant. * To his large comprehension, nothing was insignifi- 

 cant, or unworthy, of consideration. He ever sought however to 

 look beyond the ascertained and isolated or classified fact, to its 

 antecedent cause; and in opposition to the dogma of Comte, he 

 averred that the knowledge of facts is not science, that these are 

 merely the materials from which its temple is constructed by the 

 generalizations of sagacious and attested speculation. 



Among his earlier studies, Chemistry occupied a prominent place. 

 The youthful assistant in the laboratory of his former Instructor 

 and ever honored friend, Dr. T. Romeyn Beck, and later, himself 

 a teacher of the art and knowledge to others, a skillful manipulator, 

 an acute analyst and investigator of re-actions, he seemed at first 

 destined to become a leader in chemical research. Like Newton, 

 he endeavored to bring the atomic combinations under the concep- 

 tion of physical laws; believing this essential to the development 

 of chemistry as a true science. He always kept himself well- 

 informed on the progress of the more recent doctrines of quantiva- 

 lence, and the newer system of nomenclature. 



He had also paid considerable attention to geology; with its 

 relations to paleontology on the one side, and to physical geography 

 on the other. 



* " A proper view of the relation of science and art will enable him [the 

 reader] to see that the one is dependent on the other; and that each branch of 

 the study of nature is intimately connected with every other." (Agricultural 

 Report for 1857, p. 419.) "The statement cannot be too often repeated, that each 

 branch of knowledge is connected with every other, and that no light can be 

 gained in regard to one, which is not reflected upon all." (Smithsonian Report 

 for 1859, p. 15.) 



