DISCOURSE OF W. B. TAYLOB. 359 



hypotheses or antecedent probabilities, as .a general rule no extended 

 series of investigations can be made as to the approximate cause of 

 casual phenomena. They require to be used however with great 

 care, lest they become false guides which lead to error rather than 

 to truth." * Who that listened could fail to perceive that the speaker 

 was unconsciously giving us precious glimpses into his own ex- 

 perience ? 



In less than two weeks after this, his last appearance among us, 

 he suffered at New York a temporary numbness in his hands, 

 which he feared might threaten a paralysis ; but a subsequent swell- 

 ing of his feet and hands revealed to his physician the nature of 

 his inward disease as a nephritis, which had insidiously assailed 

 him before it was suspected, and had doubtless been aggravated 

 by his unremitting scientific labors continued as usual through his 

 last summer vacation. Only a month before he died, he thus 

 described the commencement of his malady: "After an almost 

 uninterrupted period of excellent health for fifty years, I awoke on 

 the 5th of December at my office in the Light-House Depot in 

 Staten Island, finding my right hand in a paralytic condition. This 

 was at first referred by the medical adviser, to an affection of the 

 brain, but as the paralysis subsided in a considerable degree in the 

 course of two days, this conclusion was doubted, and on a thorough 

 examination through the eye, and by means of auscultation, and 

 chemical analysis, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and Dr. J. J. Woodward 

 pronounced the disease an affection of the kidneys." f 



* Bulletin Phil. Soc. Washington, Nov. 24, 1877, vol. ii. pp. 165, 166. 



t Opening Address, written for the meeting of the National Academy of Sci- 

 ences, April 16th, 1878. (Proceed. Nat. Acad. Sci., vol. i. part 2, pp. 127, 128.) In the 

 same address (read to the Academy by the Secretary) he remarked: " I am warned 

 that I must devote my energies with caution, and expend no more power 

 physical or mental, than is commensurate with my present, condition, and in 

 consideration of this I think it advisable to curtail as much as possible, the 

 various offices which have been pressed upon me in consideration of my resi- 

 dence in the city of Washington, and my association with the Smithsonian 

 Institution. - - - I therefore beg leave to renew my request to be allowed to 

 resign the presidency of the Academy, the resignation to take effect at the next 

 meeting. I retain the office six months longer, in the hope that I may be 

 restored to such a. condition of health as to be able to prepare some suggestions 

 which may be of importance for the future of the Academy." And in his closing 

 Address at the end of the session, three days later (April 19th), in earnest words 

 having now the solemnity of a valedictory charge, he urged that moral integrity 

 of character is essential to conscientious fidelity in scientific research ; and that 



