562 CONGKESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



the Smithsonian controversy to be identical with "discovery." The 

 idea seems to be that knowledge can only be increased by the discovery 

 of new truth. This is an arbitrary and untenable position. A mind 

 experiences an increase of knowledge if it knows more than it did 

 before, although all the ideas it has received may ])o in the commonest 

 text-books. There has been an increase of knowledge in the school, 

 in the congregation, in the lecture room, if ideas not before known to 

 them have been received into the minds of the hearers; even, indeed, 

 it matters not if those ideas have been recorded for thousands of jenrs 

 in languages, classical or sacred, that have been dead long ago. Knowl- 

 edge has been increased if one mind has received more, whether it be 

 new or old truth. The language of Smithson is perfe(^tly simple, and 

 in its natural sense covers the whole ground — it includes, but does not 

 require, new truth. Truth discovered a thousand years ago is as good 

 as truth discovered yesterday. Knowledge embraces it all alike, and 

 Smithson's object was to carry knowledge where it was not before, 

 and to increase it where it was; to spread it over a wider area and to 

 a greater depth. 



In like manner a particular meaning has been crowded upon the 

 word "knowledge" — not its ordinary meaning in common usage, but 

 a narrow, technical, and special meaning. This has been done by con- 

 founding it with "science." It is true that, in their primitive origin, 

 or roots, in the languages from which they are derived, these words 

 may be identical in their meaning, but not so as actually used in com- 

 mon conversation and familiar and general literature. "Knowledge" 

 is all-comprehensive — embracing science, art, literature, politics, busi- 

 ness, the whole world of nature and culture, the entire realm of facts 

 and reality, all ages and all that they have contained. "Science" is 

 almost universally employed to denote those branches of knowledge 

 which are systematized into a distinct organization or arrangement, 

 based upon definite principles, and reduced to particular rules. In 

 the progress of knowledge new sciences are added to the list, and in 

 the establishment of new classifications the boundary lines are altered. 

 There is a vast amount of knowledge not included in any science. Fur- 

 ther, the word science is sometimes used to embrace only a part of 

 what, in a broader sense, is included in the sciences. It is getting to 

 become quite generally used to denote what are called the physical 

 sciences, excluding political, moral, and intellectual science — excluding 

 history, the arts, and all general literature. Surely, it can not be 

 maintained that "knowledge" was used by Smithson as merely iden- 

 tical with "science" in this last-mentioned and most limited sense. 



The words "among men" were used merely to corroborate the idea 

 expressed by the word "diffusion." They do not necessarily^ imply 

 that the Institution should confine itself to world-wide operations. 

 The Avord is not, as some seem to suppose, ""mankind," but "men;" 



