88 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



aid in building the solid structure of physical truth, to be thrown 

 to the ground as soon as the walls were completed. 



Professor HENRY was strongly imbued with the spirit of induc- 

 tive philosophy, and knew how, in searching for a true generalization, 

 to carry out the process of successive exclusion, to try this and then 

 the other experiment in order to discover which of his theories 

 corresponded with the facts, believing, doubtless, with the wittiest 

 of Frenchmen that a theory is like a mouse, which, after passing 

 through nine holes, may be caught in the tenth. 



Although accustomed to distinguish strongly between the merit 

 of the discovery of a scientific principle and that of invention 

 through which the principle was to be applied to the world's use, 

 he well knew how inseparable are the two, and how greatly even 

 inventions not directly inspired by science have quickened its march 

 and extended the field of its activity. The large humanity which 

 was a marked feature in his character led him to welcome heartily 

 every instance of inventive application, as well when simply con- 

 ducive to the welfare of society as when giving to science a new 

 implement for investigation. Indeed, the genius of HENRY was 

 eminently practical, if we extend this term to embrace the highest, 

 widest, and most enduring forms of utility. Valuing highly a 

 legitimate hypothesis, he had, I think, no relish for those flights of 

 the imagination in which men of science sometimes indulge them- 

 selves amid regions of pure conjecture or of vague and indeterminate 

 data, in the hope, by the spell of a profound mathematics, to convert 

 shadowy suggestions into substantial truth. 



Large and accurate as were his attainments in physical science, 

 HENRY was too modest and too just to dogmatize on questions in 

 regard to which opinions are divided. Whatever were his convic- 

 tions in matters transcending scientific inquiry and proof, he did 

 not allow them to be the standard by which other consciences were, 

 to be judged, and he felt, as I cannot but believe, that dogmatism, 



