PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 201 



what the spirits did foi" Faust wheu they opened his eyes to see the 

 sign of the macrocosm, and summoned him "to unveil the powers 

 of nature lying all around him." Not more effectual was the call 

 which came to St. Augustine, when, as he lay beneath the shadow 

 of the fig-tree, weeping in the bitterness of a contrite soul, he 

 seemed to hear a voice that said to him : " Tolle, lege; tolle, lege," 

 and at the sound of which he turned away forever from the Ten 

 Predicaments of Aristotle, and all the books of the rhetoricians, 

 to follow what seemed to him the "lively oracles of God." No 

 sooner had Henry recovered from his sickness, than, obedient to 

 the new vision of life and duty which had dawned upon him, he 

 summoned his comrades of "the Rostrum" to meet him in con- 

 ference, formally resigned the ofQce of President, and, in a vale- 

 dictory address, announced to his associates that, subordinating 

 the pleasures of literature to the acquisition of serious know- 

 ledge, he had determined henceforth to consecrate his life to ar- 

 duous and solid studies. 



There are doubtless those who, in the retrospect of Prof. 

 Henry's youth, as contrasted with the rich flower and fruitage of 

 his riper years, will please themselves with curious speculations 

 on what " might have been," if his rabbit had never slipped its 

 inclosure, if there had been no crack in the wall behind the book- 

 case, or if Gregory's Lectures had never fallen in his way at the 

 critical juncture of his life, much as the great mind of Pascal 

 pleased itself with musing how the fate of Europe might have 

 been changed if the Providential grain of sand in Cromwell's tissue 

 had not sent him to a premature grave ; or how the whole face of 

 the earth would have been changed if the nose of Cleopatra had 

 been a little shorter than it was, and so had marred the beauty 

 of face which made her, like another Helen, the teterrima causa 



hood. In the fly-*leaf of the book the following memorandum is found, 

 ■written V)y Prof. H. in the year 1837 : This book, although by no means 

 a profound work, has, under Providence, exerted a remarkable influence 

 on my life. It accidentally fell into my hands when I was about sixteen 

 years old, and was the first book, with the exception of works of fiction, 

 that I ever read with attention. It opened to me a new world of thought 

 and enjoyment, invested things before almost unnoticed with the highest 

 inttM'est, fixed my mind on the study of nature, and caused me to resolve 

 at the time of reading it that I would devote my life to the acquisition of 

 knowledge. — Joseph Henry. 



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