TWENTY-SIXTH CONGEESS, 1839-1841. 191 



nian fund should be preserved entire and unimpaired, invested in such 

 manner as to secure a yearly income of 6 per cent, and a perpetual 

 annuity for yearly appropriation for all future time. The reasons for 

 this are so obvious and so urgent, that it was scarcely to be anticipated 

 they would meet with any deliberate opposition. The object of the 

 testator's bequest is as comprehensive as the human mind, and as 

 durable as the existence of the race of man upon earth. The increase 

 and diffusion of knowledge is, in its nature, progressive to the end of 

 time. An institution which should exhaust in its first establishment 

 and organization the whole, or the principal part of the bequest, would 

 necessarily be confined within limits exceedingly narrow, compared 

 with the vast design of increasing and diffusing knowledge. It would 

 also, as may be concluded from uniform experience, be unable for any 

 long series of years to sustain itself, but would gradually sink into 

 insignificance and apathy, or requiie continual support from public 

 or private munificence. The Smithsonian fund exceeds half a million 

 of dollars; b}^ investing it safely, under the guaranty of the nation's 

 faith, to yield a yearly income of 6 per cent, it places at the disposal of 

 Congress a sum of more than $30,000 to be applied every year to any 

 object promotiA'e of the increase and diffusion of knowledge. The 

 means of attaining this end will, from the very progressive nature of 

 knowledge, vary from time to time. Knowledge, in her progress over 

 the world of mind, pours, like the father of the floods, her waters into 

 the ocean of time, swollen by the tributary accession of unnumbered 

 streams. 



This was among the principal considerations, connecting the first of 

 these fundamental principles with the second — that no part of the 

 Smithsonian fund, principal or interest, shall be applied to any school, 

 college, university, institute of education, or ecclesiastical establishment. 



There are in these United States 95 universities and colleges, besides 

 high schools, academies, and common schools without number. The 

 object of all these institutions is one and the same — education from 

 infancy to manhood. The subjects of instruction are all the depart- 

 ments of human science, from the primer and the spelling book to the 

 theory of infinites and the mechanism of the heavens. They are vari- 

 ously graduated and adapted to the capacities and wants of the 

 expanding mind, from the moment when the child becomes capable of 

 receiving instruction to the full formation of adult age, and the prepa- 

 ration of the citizen for the performance of the duties of active life, 

 and the exercise of the faculties thus acquired for the benefit of the 

 individual himself and of his fellow-creatures in the social relations of 

 life. The ultimate object of them all is instruction — the communica- 

 tion of knowledge already possessed— and not the discover}^ of new 

 truths or the invention of new instruments for the enlargement of 

 human power. This was evidently the purpose of Mr. Smithson; and 



