More than a hundred years ago, in Strasbourg, on the Rhine, in obedience to the commands of his father, a German lad was reluctantly studying the mysteries of the civil law, but feeding his spirit as best he could upon the formal and artificial poetry of his native land, when a page of William Shakespeare met his eye, and changed the whole current of his life. Abandoning the law, he created and crowned with an immortal name the grandest epoch of German literature.
Recording his own experience, he says:
At the first touch of Shakespeare's genius, I made the glad confession that something inspiring hovered above me.... The first page of his that I read made me his for life; and when I had finished a single play, I stood like one born blind, on whom a miraculous hand bestows sight in a moment. I saw, I felt, in the most vivid manner that my existence was infinitely expanded.
This Old World experience of Goethe's was strikingly reproduced, though under different conditions and with different results, in the early life of Joseph Henry. You have just heard the incident worthily recounted; but let us linger over it a moment. An orphan boy of sixteen, of tough Scotch fibre, laboring for his own support at the handicraft of the jeweler, unconscious of his great power, delighted with romance and the drama, dreaming of a possible career on the stage, his attention was suddenly arrested by a single page of an humble book of science which chanced to fall into his hands. It was not the flash of a poetic vision which aroused him. It was the voice of great Nature calling her child. With quick recognition and glad reverence his spirit responded; and from that moment to the end of his long and honored life, Joseph Henry was the devoted student of science, the faithful interpreter of nature.
To those who knew his gentle spirit, it is not surprising that ever afterward he kept the little volume near him, and cherished it as the source of his first inspiration. In the maturity of his fame he recorded on its fly-leaf his gratitude. Note his words:
This book, under Providence, has exerted a remarkable influence on my life.... It opened to me a new world of thought and enjoyment, invested things before almost unnoticed with the highest interest, 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.
We have heard from his venerable associates with what resolute perseverance he trained his mind and marshalled his powers for the higher realms of science. He was the first American after Franklin who made a series of successful original experiments in electricity and magnetism. He entered the mighty line of Volta, Galvani, Oërsted, Davy, and Ampère, the great exploring philosophers of the world, and added to their work a final great discovery, which made the electro-magnetic telegraph possible.
It remained only for the inventor to construct an instrument and an alphabet. Professor Henry refused to reap any pecuniary rewards from his great discovery, but gave freely to mankind what nature and science had given to him. The venerable gentleman of almost eighty years, who has just addressed us so eloquently, has portrayed the difficulties which beset the government in its attempt to determine how it should wisely and worthily execute the trust of Smithson. It was a perilous moment for the credit of America when that bequest was made. In his large catholicity of mind, Smithson did not trammel the bequest with conditions. In nine words he set forth its object—"for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." He asked and believed that America would interpret his wish aright, and with the liberal wisdom of science....
For ten years Congress wrestled with those nine words of Smithson and could not handle them. Some political philosophers of that period held that we had no constitutional authority to accept the gift at all [laughter] and proposed to send it back to England. Every conceivable proposition was made. The colleges clutched at it; the libraries wanted it; the publication societies desired to scatter it. The fortunate settlement of the question was this: that, after ten years of wrangling, Congress was wise enough to acknowledge its own ignorance, and authorized a body of men to find some one who knew how to settle it. [Applause.] And these men were wise enough to choose your great comrade to undertake the task. Sacrificing his brilliant prospects as a discoverer, he undertook the difficult work. He drafted a paper, in which he offered an interpretation of the will of Smithson, mapped out a plan which would meet the demands of science, and submitted it to the suffrage of the republic of scientific scholars. After due deliberation it received the almost unanimous approval of the scientific world. With faith and sturdy perseverance, he adhered to the plan and steadily resisted all attempts to overthrow it.
In the thirty-two years during which he administered the great trust, he never swerved from his first purpose; and he succeeded at last in realizing the ideas with which he started.