• 122 EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



it contains nothing from which such an inference can be drawn. All 

 knowledge is useful, and the higher the more important. From the 

 enunciation of a single scientific truth may flow a hundred inventions, 

 and the higher the truth the more important the deductions. 



To effect the greatest good, the organization of tlie Institution should 

 be such as to produce results which could not be attained by other 

 means, and inasmuch as the bequest is for men in general, all merely 

 local expenditures are violations of the will. 



These views were not entertained at first, and great (hfficulties have _ 

 been encountered in carrying them out. A number of literary men ■ 

 thought that a great library should be founded at Washington, and all 

 the money expended on it. Others considered a museum the proper 

 object, and another class thought the income should be devoted to the 

 delivery of lectures throughout the country ; while still another was of 

 opinion that popular tracts should be published and distributed among 

 the million. But all these views were advanced without a proper ex- 

 amination of the will, or a due consideration of the smallness of the 

 income. The diffusion of tracts has been a favorite idea, but it mast 

 be recollected that a single report of the Patent Office costs the gov- 

 ernment three times as much as the whole income of the Smithsonian 

 fund. A single pamphlet of ten pages could not annually be printed 

 by the Institution, and distributed to all who would have a claim to it. 



(3.) The next question is, by what plan can the several requisitions 

 of the will be fulfilled. 



This question was not fully settled by the act of Congress. It di- 

 rected the formation of a Library, a Museum, a Gallery of Arts, 

 Lectures, and a building on a liberal scale to accommodate these ob- 

 jects. One clause, however, gave the Regents the power, after the 

 foregoing objects are provided for, to expend the remainder of the in- 

 come in any way they may think fit for carr3dng out the design of the 

 testator. 



The objects specified in the act of Congress evidently does not come 

 up to the idea of the testator, as deduced from a critical examination ot 

 his will. A library, a museum, a gallery of arts, though important in 

 themselves, are local in their influence. I have from the beginning 

 advocated this opinion on all occasions, and shall continue to advocate 

 it whenever a suitable opportunity occurs. 



The (juestion, therefore, again recurs: what plan can be adopted in 

 conformity with the terms of the bequest? 



There are two. First — a number of men may be appointed by the 

 Institution to make researches in the different branches of science, and 

 to send accounts of their discoveries to all parts of the world. In this 

 way, in the strictest sense of the terms, knowledge would be increased 

 and diffused. But this plan is not compatible with the limited income 

 of the Institution, and W(mld offer many practical difficulties. 



The other plan, and the one adopted, is to stimulate all persons in 

 this country capable of advancing knowledge by original research, to 

 labor in this line — to induce them to send the results to the Institution 

 for examination and publication — and to assist all persons engaged in 

 original investigations as far as the means of the Institution will allow; 

 also to institute, at the expense and under the direction of the Institu- 



