TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-47. 423 





alone by 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 -4 

 hinted, between all branches of knowledge and of liberal 

 art, whether speculative or experimental, such an indissol- 

 uble bond, such a relation of interdependence, that you 

 cannot advance any one without at the same time promoting 

 all others. The pioneer in every walk of science strikes 

 put 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. Examples of 

 this kind might be multiplied without end, but I will con- 

 tent myself with an illustration or two from a science which 

 deals only in abstract numbers and imaginary quantities, 

 and utterly rejects experiment and observation as tests of 

 truth or as instruments of its discovery. 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 elementary bodies 

 not appreciable by any of the senses, in chemical combina- 

 tions ; 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 engi- 

 neering, practical mechanics, and all the experimental 

 sciences, owe to this one science, which in its investigations 

 appeals to no empiricism, calls in the aid of none of the 

 senses, none of the machinery of art or of nature. 



But, independent of this particular point, the aid which 

 the physical sciences may expect to derive from mere specu- 

 lative knowledge, I should hope that at this time, and in 

 this place, one might safely venture a plea in behalf ot all 

 that higher knowledge which serves to humanize, to refine, 

 to elevate, to make men more deeply wise, better, less 

 thoughtful of material interests, and more regardful of 

 eternal truths. And let it not be said that our own brief 

 history proves that great libraries are superfluous, because 

 without them we have produced statesmen, civilians, orators, 

 and jurisprudents, no wise inferior to the ablest of their 

 European contemporaries. Without dwelling upon the 

 stimulus of popular institutions, and the stirring excite- 

 ment of our revolutionary and later history, which have 



