TWENTY-rflXTlI CONGRESS, 1830-41. 215 



library — all institutions of which there are numerous exam- 

 ples among the civilized Christian nations, and of most of 

 which our own country is not entirely destitute — all are 

 undoubtedly included within the comprehensive grasp of 

 Mr. Smithson's design — all may receive, in turn, and with 

 progressive utility and power, liberal contributions from 

 the continually growing income of the trust. Nor did the 

 committee believe that the moral or political sciences, the 

 philosoph}' of language, the natural history of speech, the 

 graces of 2:)olite literature, the mechanic or the liberal arts, 

 were to be excluded from the benefits prepared for poster- 

 ity by the perpetuation of this fund. Whatever personal 

 preference Mr. Smithson may, during his life, have enter- 

 tained for the cultivation of the natural sciences, no such 

 preference encumbers his bequest, or is indicated by his 

 will. It is KNOWLEDGE — the source of all human wisdom, 

 and of all beneficent power — knowledge, as far transcend- 

 ing the postulated lever of Archimedes as the universe 

 transcends this speck of earth upon its face — knowledge, 

 the attribute of Omnipotence, of which man alone in the 

 physical and material world is permitted to participate ; 

 the increase and diffusion of which among men is the result 

 to which the ample fortune of Mr. Smithson is devoted, 

 and for the accomplishment of which he selects the United 

 States of America as his trustees, and their National Gov- 

 ernment as his agents. Let not, then, any branch or 

 department of human knowledge be excluded from its 

 equitable share of this benefaction ; but it is believed that 

 no one science deserves or requires the immediate applica- 

 tion of the accrued and accruing income of the fund so 

 urgently as practical astronomy. 



The express object of an observatory is the increase of 

 knowledge by new discovery. The physical relations between 

 the firmament of heaven, and the globe allotted by the 

 Creator of all to be the abode of man, are discoverable only 

 by the organ of the eye. Many of these relations are 

 indispensable to the existence of human life, and, perhaps, 

 of the earth itself. Who can conceive the idea of a world 

 without a sun, but must connect with it the extinction of 

 light and heat, of all animal life, of all vegetation and pro- 

 duction ; leaving the lifeless clod of matter to return to 

 the primitive state of chaos, or to be consumed by elemen- 

 tal fire ? The influence of the moon — of the planets, our 

 next door neighbors of the solar system — of the fixed stars, 

 scattered over the blue expanse in multitudes exceeding 

 the power of human computation, and at distances of 



