JOSEPH HENRY, LL.D. 297 



to his family during life, and afterwards to the 

 National Academy of Sciences, to be devoted to 

 original research. 



In character he was above reproach. He said, 

 " I think that immorality and great mental power 

 exercised in the discovery of scientific truths are 

 incompatible with each other ; and that more error 

 is introduced from defect in moral sense than from 

 want of intellectual capacity." 



He loved nature. "A life devoted exclusively 

 to the study of a single insect," he said, "is not 

 spent in vain. No animal, however insignificant, 

 is isolated ; it forms a part of the great system of 

 nature, and is governed by the same general laws 

 which control the most prominent beings of the 

 organic world." In 1870, when gazing upon the 

 Aar glacier, from the Ehone valley, he exclaimed 

 to his daughter, while the tears coursed down his 

 cheeks : " This is a place to die in. We should go 

 no further." A really great man is never afraid to 

 show that he has a tender heart. 



He loved his home. Out from it, in his early 

 married life, two children went by death, and later, 

 an only son in his early manhood. Three daughters 

 were left him. One of them records in her diary : 

 " Had father with us all the evening. I modelled 

 his profile in clay, while he read * Thomson's Sea- 

 sons ' 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 



