DISCOURSE OF W. B. TAYLOR. 343 



These broad and fearless views, entertained and expressed as 

 early as 1860, or 1861, exhibiting neither the zealous confidence of 

 the votary, nor the jealous anxiety of the antagonist, received 

 scarcely any modification during his subsequent years. Nor did 

 it ever seem to occur to him that any reconstruction of his religious 

 faith was involved in the solution of the problem. So much reli- 

 gious faith indeed was exercised by him in every scientific judgment, 

 that he regarded the teachings of science but as revelations of the 

 Divine mode of government in the natural world : to be diligently 

 sought for and submissively accepted ; with the constant recognition 

 however of our human limitations, and the relativity of human 

 knowledge.* Not inappropriately may be here recalled a char- 

 acteristic statement of the office of hypothesis, made by him some 

 ten years earlier: presenting a consideration well calculated to 

 restrain dogmatism whether in science or in theology. "It is not 

 necessary that an hypothesis be absolutely true, in order that it may 

 be adopted as an expression of a generalization for the purpose of 

 explaining and predicting phenomena : it is only necessary that it 

 should be well conditioned in accordance with known mechanical 

 principles. - - - Man with his finite faculties cannot hope in 

 this life to arrive at a knowledge of absolute truth : and were the 

 true theory of the universe, or in other words the precise mode in 

 which Divine Wisdom operates in producing the phenomena of the 

 material world revealed to him, his mind would be unfitted for its 

 reception. It would be too simple in its expression, and too gen- 

 eral in its application, to be understood and applied by intellects 

 like ours." f 



INVESTIGATIONS IN ACOUSTICS. 



During the last quarter of a century, among the many interests 

 which demanded and engaged his attention, Henry studied with 



* With reference to the intimations of the comparative antiquity of man, 

 HENRY quoted with sympathetic approbation the sentiment so well expressed by 

 the Bishop of London in a Lecture at Edinburgh, that "The man of science 

 should go on honestly, patiently, diffidently, observing and storing up his obser- 

 vations, and carrying his reasonings unflinchingly to their legitimate conclu- 

 sions, convinced that it would be treason to the majesty at once of science ^and 

 of religion, if he sought to help either by swerving ever so little from the straight 

 line of truth." (Smithsonian Report for 1868, p. 33.) 



t Proceed. Am. Assoc. Albany, Aug. 1851, pp. 85, 86, and 87. 



