PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON's BEQUEST. 887 



with the philosophy of the nineteenth century and not be- 

 come a virtuous man. 



Physical knowledge is not the property of any part of 

 mankind, but the property of all. The pursuit of it is what 

 all are interested in the profits of it all share; and herein 

 consists the vast superiority which it possesses over mere 

 literature. The one is general and for the whole world, the 

 other is sectional or local ; the one dispenses its benefits alike 

 on the civilized and the savage, the other only on the man of 

 education. The course of events and the casualties of time 

 may bring about the destruction of English letters, and poets 

 that we have thought immortal may be forgotten, and works 

 of art or of taste be buried under the lapse of ages, but English 

 science can never die; the steamship will still continue to 

 cross the Atlantic, the locomotive will still pass over the 

 railway. One-half of the human family is in utter ignorance 

 of what is thought learned and beautiful and wise by the 

 other half. There are millions in Asia who have never 

 heard of Paradise Lost millions in Africa who know 

 nothing of the Cartoons of Raphael; and on the other hand, 

 among these people there have existed accomplished orators 

 and valiant warriors of whom we have never heard works 

 of art that we have never seen. But the savage as well as 

 the civilized, the Oriental as well as the Western man, casts 

 away his bow and arrows on the discovery of gunpowder; 

 the Chinese junk as well as the American man-of-war is 

 steered by the magnetic needle. 



To diffuse benefits of this order, which can be participated 

 in by all the families of the earth to devise means of in- 

 creasing the power, the wisdom, the virtue of man is the 

 great object of the Smithsonian bequest. It is a solemn and 

 responsible duty which has fallen upon Congress a duty 

 which, as the Government has commenced, so it must complete. 



There are, however, among us men known both to you 

 and me whose views are unfavorable in relation to the estab- 

 lishment of an University at Washington, The bearings 

 of their political creed, they say, lead them to question the 

 constitutionality of Congress intermeddling at all with public 

 education. Without joining issue with them on the law of 

 the contested point, I would rather reason as to the facts of 

 the case. The Government has received, or rather by process 

 of law spontaneously taken possession of a certain amount of 

 money, under conditions which every plain-dealing person 

 among us understands. If by casting obstacles in the way 

 we defer from time to time the completion and discharge 

 of that duty, how can we bring men who live in other coun- 



