332 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



Range oj information. — II 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 followwith 

 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 lie found to he 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 tin' 

 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 toothers, 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 palaeontology 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 thai the one N dependent en tin- other; and that each branch <>( 

 tin' study of nature is intimately connected with everj other.'' f Agricultural 



l;< port for 1857, p. 419.) "The statement cannot be t iften 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. 1.3.) 



