382 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



catholic spirit; that we remember that '' knowledge" embraces other 

 arts than those of bread; that man's economical interests are not his 

 highest. 



The purpose of the testator, which we are to carry out, was "the 

 increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." What, then, is the 

 most efficient means of increasing and diffusing knowledge? Increase, 

 accumulation, must precede diffusion. Every rill supposes a fountain; 

 and knowledge can not "flow down our streets like a river," without 

 there be first built and filled a capacious reservoir, from which those 

 streams shall issue. It is an error to suppose that the accumulation 

 of the stores of existing learning, the amassing of the recoi-ds of 

 intellectual action, does not tend also to increase knowledge. What 

 is there new in the material world, except by extraction or combina- 

 tion ? How are new substances formed, or the stock of a given sub- 

 stance increased, l)y the chemistry of nature or of art? By now 

 combinations or decompositions of known and preexisting elements. 

 The products of the experimental or manufacturing laboratory are no 

 new creations; but their elements are first extracted by the decompo- 

 sition of old compounds, and then recombined in new forms. Thus is 

 it also, in some degree, with the immaterial products of the human 

 mind; but there is this difference: Knowledge grows not alone l^y 

 extraction and combination, but, unlike the dead matter with which 

 chemistry deals, it is itself organic, living, productive. There is 

 moreover, as I have already hinted, between all branches of knowl- 

 edge and of liberal art, whether speculative or experimental, such an 

 indissoluble bond, such a relation of interdependence, that you can 

 not advance any one without at the same time promoting all others. 

 The pioneer in< every walk of science strikes out sparks that not only 

 guide his own researches, but illuminate also the paths of those around 

 him, though they may be laboring in quite other directions. Exam- 

 ples of this kind might be multiplied without end, but I will content 

 myself with an illustration or two from a science which deals only in 

 abstract numbers and imaginary quantities, and utterly rejects experi- 

 ment and observation as tests of truth or as instruments of its dis- 

 covery. Who would have supposed that the intervals of the diatonic 

 scale in music were capable of exact appreciation, and their relations 

 of precise ascertainment by numerical quantities ? Who would have 

 expected that pure mathematics would have been appealed to to 

 decide between the rival claims of the corpuscular and the undulatory 

 theories of light; or to ascertain the proportions and relations of ele- 

 mentary bodies not appreciable by any of the senses, in chemical com- 

 binations; or, as my accomplished friend from South Carolina (Mr. 

 Holmes) suggests, that the authenticity of a disputed text in the 

 Scriptures would be determined by an algebraical theorem ? What do 

 not astronomy, navigation, civil engineering, practical mechanics, and 



