Physics 5 2 * 



the general plan of the increase and diffusion of knowledge, 

 as adopted by the Board, is such as would naturally rise in 

 the mind of any person conversant with the history of phys- 

 ical science and with the means usually employed for its ex- 

 tension and diffusion." But this unconscious leaning toward 

 that department of human knowledge with which he was 

 most conversant, and in which he had already won distinc- 

 tion, did not influence him in the slightest degree in drawing 

 up the program of organization which he submitted to the 

 Regents on the same date as above, or in his administrative 

 execution of that program during the many years of his 

 secretaryship. In the introduction to the plan submitted to, 

 and approved by, the Regents, he says : " The will makes no 

 restriction in favor of any particular kind of knowledge ; 

 hence all branches are entitled to a share of attention." It is 

 to this broad and catholic spirit by which Joseph Henry was 

 controlled that the world is indebted for an instrumentality 

 for the general good which has no likeness among all the 

 many scientific, educational, or charitable establishments of 

 the Old World or the New. 



In attempting to review the operations of the Smithsonian 

 Institution in any special field, it is of first importance that 

 the above considerations should be kept in mind. The will 

 of the man who had made the peculiar bequest was law to 

 the man who, most fortunately, had been selected as its*first 

 administrator. The Institution was to have two distinct, but 

 closely-related, functions : to increase knowledge and to dif- 

 fuse it among men. Henry proposed to increase knowledge 

 by . stimulating original research through suitable rewards 

 and pecuniary assistance, where it was necessary or desir- 

 able ; he would diffuse it by the publication of periodical 

 reports and occasional monographs or separate treatises. 

 But all of this was to be controlled by the general and most 

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