In most
offices, the duties terminate with the office, and the thing of
the past, the ex-officer, is to the present an unknown quantity. But it
is not so with your President. Science, with its
time-annihilating power, which gives life to the fossil, which hurries
the embryo future into premature birth, which ventures beyond the grave
even to the foot of the invisible throne, sternly drags forward its
reluctant presidents to their hardest trial when they have ceased to
be, to a judgment after death severer than that of Rhadamanthus. This
calling out of the actor upon the stage after the night of performance,
when the blood is no longer warm, is all the worse to him who has never
before made a set speech, all whose habits of thought are unknown to
aesthetic display, and the Arctic latitudes of whose frigid studies are
impenetrable to the God of eloquence and to the Muses who vibrate the
silver-toned chords of human sympathy.
Geometry, to which I have devoted my life, is
honored with the title of the Key of the Sciences; but it is the key of
{2} an ever-open door, which refuses to be shut, and through which the
whole world is crowding, to make free, in unrestrained license, with
the precious treasures within, thoughtless both of lock and key, of the
door itself, and even of science, to which it owes such boundless
possessions, this New World included. The door is wide open, and all
may enter; but all do not enter with equal thoughtlessness. There are a
few who wonder, as they approach, at the exhaustless wealth, as the
sacred shepherd wondered at the burning bush of Horeb, which was ever
burning and never consumed. Casting their shoes from off their feet,
and the world's iron-shod doubts from their understanding, these
children of the faithful take their first step upon the holy ground
with reverential awe, and advance almost with timidity, fearful, as the
signs of Deity break upon them, lest they shall be brought face to face
with the Almighty. They are the searchers after truth, and do not pass
the door or the key without careful scrutiny.
The key ! It is of wonderful construction, with its
infinity of combination, and its unlimited capacity to fit every lock,
however varied in form and size; it closes the massive arches which
gnarl the vaults whence the mechanic arts supply the warehouses of
commerce, and it opens the minute cabinet in which the queen of the
fairies protects her microscopic jewels; it is the great master-key,
which unlocks every door of knowledge, and without which no discovery –
no discovery which deserves the name, which is law and not isolated
fact – has been or ever can be made. Fascinated by its symmetry, the
geometer may, at times, have been too exclusively engrossed with his
science, forgetful of its applications; he may have exalted it into his
idol, and worshipped it; he may have degraded it into his toy, and
childishly amused himself with the singular shapes which it would
assume, when he should have been hard at work with it, using it for the
benefit of mankind and the glory of his Creator. I have seen a
watchmaker, who came into possession of a remarkable chronometer, which
was made by a prince of the craft, – by one who only made a single {3}
chronometer in a year; but that single watch was a masterpiece of art,
and in every part a modal of exquisite workmanship. The single-hearted
watchmaker would sit and gaze at the neat key of his chronometer by the
hour together, wasting in admiration the precious time, which his
faithful watch continued to measure. With the same simplicity of
devotion, the mathematician, unable to resist her charms, may embrace
his science too ardently, when it lies close to his heart; and thus her
integrity may be suspected. But ascend with me above the dust, above
the cloud, to the realms of the higher geometry, where the heavens are
never obscured; where there is no impure vapor and no delusive or
imperfect observation; where the new truths are already arisen, while
they are yet dimly dawning upon the earth below; where the earth is a
little planet; where the sun has dwindled to a star; where all the
stars are lost in the Milky-Way to which they belong; where the
Milky-Way is seen floating through space, like any other nebula; where
the whole great girdle of the nebula has diminished to an atom, and has
become as readily and completely submissive to the pen of the geometer,
and the slave of his formula, as the single drop, which fails from the
cloud, instinct with all the forces of the material world. Try with me
the precision of measure with which the universe has been meted out;
observe how exactly all the parts are fitted to the whole and to each
other, and then declare who was present in the council chamber when the
Lord laid the foundations of the earth.
Begin with the heavens themselves; see how
precisely the motions of the firmament have endured through the
friction of the ages; observe the exactness of the revolutions of the
stars; if these mighty orbs cannot resist the law, what can the atom do
? Let, then, the, resources of art be exhausted in this scrutiny. Let
neither time nor labor nor money be spared. A slight defect of motion
is just detected; it is slight, very slight, but it is unquestionable,
We dare not hide it out of sight. Science must admit this triumph of
art, and be true even if the stars are false. The names of fixed star
{4} and pole-star must not be suffered to impose upon the trusting
world, and guide it in a delusive chase after ignis fatuus. Geometry!
to the rescue! Geometry is at her post, faithful among the faithless.
The pen is at work, the midnight oil consumed, the magic circles drawn
by the wise men of the East, and the wizard logarithm summoned from the
North. The tables are turned. The defect of motion is transformed into
the discovery of a new law. It becomes the proof of the atmosphere to
bend the ray from its course as it shoots down, laden with the image of
Arcturus and the sweet influences of the Pleiades; it becomes the proof
of the moving light, of the unseen planet, and of the invisible star,
and hence a new proof of the precision of the measure. Honor to
Bradley, to Bessel, to Adams, and to Leverrier ! The stars are not
false. Question them as you may, they give the same evidence, and do
not contradict each other's testimony. They tell us that ours is not
the central sun, and that we are moving in the procession of the stars;
they tell us that we move among the others, towards the constellation
of Hercules, so that, while we grow in wisdom, we approach the strong
man's home. They tell us that we are moving at such a rate, that the
distance from star to star is but just a good geological day's journey;
and hereby they confirm the story which is written upon the crust of
our globe, and prove that the earth and the skies have been measured
out with the same unit of measure.
Descend from the infinite to the infinitesimal. Long
before Bacon and Galileo, before observation had begun to penetrate the
veil under which Nature has hidden her mysteries, the restless mind
sought some principle of power, strong enough, and of sufficient
variety, to collect and bind together all the parts of a world. This
seemed to be found, where one might least expect it, in abstract
number. Everywhere the exactest numerical proportion was seen to
constitute the spiritual element of the highest beauty. It was the
harmony of music, and the music of song; the fastidious eye of the
Athenian required the delicately curved outlines of the temple {5} in
which he worshipped his goddess to conform to the exact law of the
hyperbola, and he traced the graceful features of her statue from the
repulsive wrinkles of Arithmetic. Throughout nature, the omnipresent
beautiful revealed an all pervading language spoken to the human mind,
and to man's highest capacity of comprehension. By whom was it spoken ?
Whether by the gods of the ocean and the land, by the ruling divinities
of the sun, moon, and stars, or by the nymphs of the forest and the
dryads of the fountain, it was one speech, and its written cipher was
cabalistic. The cabala were those of number, and even if they
transcended the gematric skill of the Rabbi and the hieroglyphical
learning of the priest of Osiris, they were, distinctly and
unmistakably, expressions of thought, uttered to mind by mind; they
were the solutions of mathematical problems of extraordinary
complexity. The bee of Hymettus solved its great problem of
isoperimetry on the morning of creation; and the sword which threatened
the life of Damocles vibrated the elliptic functions two thousand
years before Legendre, Abel, and Jacobi had gained immortality by their
discussion. The very spirits of the winds, when they were sent to carry
the grateful harvest to the thirsting fields of Calabria, did not
forget the geometry which they had studied in the caverns of
Æolus, and of which the geologist is daily discovering their
diagrams. When they traversed the forest, they vibrated the bending
branches and the hanging vines into every variety of elastic and
catenarian curve; as they passed over the city, they wreathed the
rising smoke into spirals, at which the ancient philosopher could only
gaze in admiration, as it ascended with double curvature in its lofty
exponential path, and was lost to computation ere it vanished from
sight; and even when, forgetting their beneficent mission, they raged,
that awful night at sea, in a fearful struggle with gravitation for the
dominion of the ocean, amidst the shrieks of the drowning sailor, they
heaped up the waves into such majestic mountains, that the genius of
the storm thundered his approbation, {6} and man's analysis shrunk from
the investigation of the strange forms, not daring even to give them a
name.
Ancient philosophy, perceiving this power of number,
did homage to it in all the simplicity, earnestness, and truthfulness
which distinguished the early thinkers. Pythagoras and Plato, the
founders of pure mathematics, turned their search inward to find
in their own minds the origin of that force, which a universe of
phenomena could only reveal in its effects, but not in its essence.
They found there a principle, capable of ruling, restraining, and
satisfying the extravagant fancy, the ardent imagination, and the
licentious will, and of reducing all the faculties to harmonious and
consistent action. Its dignified exterior was cold and forbidding, and
marked with the gloomy inflexibility of the representative of justice,
rather than with the gracious supremacy of a sovereign. Boldly
penetrating it, they were rewarded with visions of sublime
contemplation, such as the world had never yet beheld; and the majestic
glories which surround the throne of number, to those few who are
permitted to behold them, took their hearts captive. In the intensity
of their enthusiasm, they unconsciously overstepped the bounds of human
knowledge, and strove to grope their way where the torch of observation
was not yet lighted. They sought in the monad, the duad, and the triad,
the mysteries of the Divine nature; in the perfect number, the
archetype of the highest good; and in such simple numerical ratios as
their unaided reason could devise, the complicated logic of all life.
The school-boy of the nineteenth century can detect and ridicule their
errors, but the lovers of truth will always revere their memories, and
the great discoverers will never cease to find in their magnificent
investigations the elements of further progress. Ay! more than this!
Modern science has realized some of the most fanciful of the
Pythagorean and Platonic doctrines, and thereby justified the divinity
of their spiritual instincts. Is it not significant of the nature of
the creative intellect, the simplicity of the great laws of force ? the
fact that the same curious series {7} of numbers is developed by the
growing plant which assisted in marshalling the order of the planets ?
and that the marriage of the elements cannot be consummated except in
strict accordance with the laws of definite proportion ? This last
extraordinary discovery has rescued chemistry for ever from the
blighting thrall of superstition, and, elevating it to the rank of a
science, has endowed it with the rudiments of a peculiar speech. The
promise has just been given, by one of our own number, of a large
extension of this fruitful law; Young America has given the pledge, and
we have faith in her chivalry that she will redeem it; we may then hope
that the atomic force will submit to some Newton of chemistry, and the
formula of the crystal become as legible as that of the solar system.
In all parts of the physical world, in sound and light, in electricity
and magnetism, in the elements of the air and the ocean, the same
precision is everywhere predominant. The tints of the morning cloud
reflecting the smiles of Aurora, and the angry flash of the tempest,
are equally exact expressions of the unwavering formula; and the
geological Titans, sons of Vulcan and Neptune, who once piled Pelion
upon Ossa and strewed the earth with the fragments of their battles,
and more recently have arrayed the armies of science in unnatural
conflict, are at length bound to the primitive rock of immutable law,
by the same strong, embracing, golden chain of inductive argument, with
which our Franklin "dragged the thunderer down to earth."
Every new discovery in science has now become a new
conquest to geometry. Quantitative analysis is regarded as the only
safe instrument of research, and the question of the "What kind ?" is
universally merged into that of the" How much ? ' This is not limited
to the physical sciences; even in polities, the statesman, finding in
each land all kinds of men and every element of public economy, is
forced to inquire how much there is of each, and to be guided, in the
conduct of government, by the figures of statistics. Can it, then, be
otherwise than that the science which takes especial charge {8} of the
theory and laws of exact measurement should be of universal application
? However distorted it may be in its technical forms, and diverted from
its natural position by the injudicious zeal of its votaries, its
fundamental principles are those of sound logic and good common-sense,
and whatever it touches it elucidates and illuminates. There are many
questions in which it, might be advantageously consulted further than
has yet been done, and it appears to me that the difficulty in regard
to the claims to discovery would often be settled by its judicious
application, although it might sometimes, perhaps, be tempted to divide
an ill-begotten child with the sword of justice, so as to give each
claimant his worthless share. But it would grant no countenance to that
miserable spirit of scientific adventure, which, by a moderate
fertility in suggesting possible solutions of an abstruse problem, lays
the foundation for a claim adverse to the just rights of him who, by
exact and profound investigation, has demonstrated the true doctrine.
By the severity of the standard which it would establish, it might even
compel science to renounce some of its pretended acquisitions. In
Astronomy, for instance, it must be conceded that Saturn and Jupiter,
Mars and Venus, are yet subject to unexplained irregularities of
motion; that the theory of the asteroids has not advanced beyond the
earliest stage of arithmetic; that the rings of Saturn are connected
with their primary by a force not less mysterious than that which holds
its golden representative upon the finger of the fair betrothed; and
that the laws under which the tides obey the attractions of the sun and
moon are quite undeveloped. The remarkable researches upon this subject
made in the Coast Survey, have established that here still remains
another world to be conquered, worthy the ambition of the Alexander of
Geodesy.
There is, however, a broader basis than that
of numerical accuracy for maintaining the central position of Geometry
among the sciences. It is that of form; the grand type of structural
combination. This element may often be deficient {9} in the technical
mathematician, but it is the characteristic feature of the imperial
intellects of geometry, of Archimedes and Hipparchus, Newton and
Leibnitz, Laplace and Lagrange, Monge and Gauss. It equally belongs to
great ability in every department of knowledge and art, and directs all
successful effort, from the brilliant campaign of the conqueror to the
invention of the printing-press, It is the alpha and omega of
intelligible speech, the architect of the poetic temple, the founder of
empires, and the maker of constitutions. It is the power of combining
innumerable details into a consistent whole, the highest exertion of
human genius, and that which approaches nearest to the act of creation.
It deciphers the hieroglyphic of events, and, uniting the present with
the past and the future, it is the veracity of history and the
inspiration of prophecy. It planned the vast fabric of the Reformation,
and it touched with its miraculous finger the eyeballs of that
statesman who foresaw, in its full development, the mighty tree which
now overshadows this continent, when it was concentrated in the seed of
liberty, and just germinating in the blood of the patriot. But with all
its grandeur, this principle is subject to the laws of necessity and
exactness, and when it ventures to build upon the sands of hypothesis
and speculation, or the quicksands of a priori argument, the fall of
its cathedral is certain, and only hastened by the weight of the
massive towers. The rash system of philosophy which, despising the
science it cannot comprehend, presumes to soar capriciously above the
well-established theories of inductive demonstration, must melt its
ill-cemented pinions as it approaches the source of truth, and sink,
like Icarus, into deserved ridicule and contempt. The imagination
of the immortal Kepler himself would have wasted all its strength in a
wild and whimsical race with the mysteries of cosmography, if it had
not been restrained from its extravagance by his sincere love of truth,
and soberly harnessed to the observations of Tycho. The gaudy firmament
of the artificial globe of the astronomer's studio is a singular
illustration of the impossibility {10} of devising a well-ordered plan,
when there are no proper materials for classification and distribution.
For more than twice the period of the millennium, the most savage
beasts and horrible giants have been sporting upon it with infants and
gentle maidens, and have clustered the stars in the mingled confusion
of the wilderness and the nursery. The additions which modern taste and
sycophancy have made to this curiosity-shop have not diminished its
peculiar interest, increased its classic elegance, or relieved the
perplexed interweaving of the constellations.
But the exactness required in the development of
form is that of unity, order, and continuity, more than that of number;
and it is better expressed in the curve than in the formula. Such
accuracy may be developed in its highest perfection, in minds to which
the processes of arithmetical computation are utterly distasteful.
There is one, whom I am proud to call my friend, to whom I have more
than once tried to communicate some conception of algebraic analysis
and its modes of research. Whether the fault was in the obscurity of
the teacher, or the too great density of the pupil's brain, my excess
of modesty dares not decide. Whatever was the cause, the attempt was a
total failure; I could not bring my friend to comprehend the product of
two by two, when both the twos were negative; and I am firmly convinced
that he would rather have yielded his fine teeth to the dentist, than
his radical and absurd repugnance to the extraction of an impossible
root . But of all men who ever set foot upon American soil, there is
not one who has made so many and so great scientific discoveries as
this man; there is not one who has opened so many new treasures of
knowledge; and, paradoxical as it may seem, he has unlocked every door
with the key of geometry. How was it, for instance, that he drew the
outline of the fossil fish, from that of the single scale ? and how did
it happen that the original lithograph, when it was discovered, was
identical with his design ? When he was challenged before the British
Association to portray the form of fish proper {11} to a geological
stratum in which he did not know that one was found, what power guided
the hand which held the chalk ? And when the cloth was removed, which,
to his surprise, concealed the newly discovered fish, how and where
came the extraordinary coincidence ? and whence did they acquire the
selfsame lineaments with the drawing upon the blackboard ? To what
other science than that of form is such a wonderful knowledge of form
to be attributed ? And are we not sorely tempted to confound all
scientific distinctions, and claim him, even against his will, as one
of the greatest of geometers, who has advanced the science far beyond
the higher flight of the transcendental formula into the domain of the
organic kingdom ? When he was commissioned by the illustrious
chief of the Coast Survey to examine the reefs of Florida, by what a
consummate mathematical logic did he trace back their history for more
than a thousand centuries, to the probable beginning of the present
geological period !
Of the many difficult questions with which science
is disturbed, none are so serious as those which are connected with
religion, There are men, and pious men too, who seem honestly to think
that science and religion are naturally opposed to each other; than
which I cannot conceive a more monstrous absurdity. How can there be a
more faithless species of infidelity, than to believe that the Deity
has written his word upon the material universe and a contradiction of
it in the Gospel ? And is it possible that such a belief has ever been
seriously professed ? Or is the other alternative less unreasonable,
that the serpent has wound its coils around the tree of knowledge, and
that the alluring fruit which has been dropping at the foot of man from
the days of Adam to those of Newton, is poisoned to its core?
Shall we believe that the voices of Nature are the songs of the Siren
and the artful temptations of the Devil, to divert man from his
devotions ? If this be so, how singularly forgetful has the Enemy been
of his interests, or how divided against himself and his own {12}
household, that he is thus praising God and magnifying him for ever,
"in all the works of creation; in the sun and moon, and the stars of
heaven; in the showers and dew; in the winds; the fire and heat; the
winter and summer; the light and darkness; the lightnings and clouds;
the mountains and hills; and all the green things upon the earth" !
that he is "for ever blessing the Lord in the whales and all that move
in the waters; in the fowls of the air; and in the beasts and cattle" !
Can it be that this universal anthem, this all-resounding chorus of
hallelujah, is a cunning device of hell to gain the souls of men ? and
that the arch-hypocrite stole from the fire upon the tongues of the
holy children whom he dared not touch ? and that he has ventured behind
the altar into the inmost sanctuary of the church, in the garb of a
high priest, and inscribed the sublime canticle upon the book of
prayer, with the pen which was dipped in the blood of Christ ? Or is it
to be supposed that unconscious matter has abjured its Creator, and,
having no will, has fallen with the infinite sin of man's rebellion,
melting in the fires of its volcano the impress of the seal of
approbation which was imprinted on the day of creation? Such absurd
hypotheses may; in this age, be left to their own refutation.
There is proof enough furnished by every
science, but by none more than by geometry, that the world to which we
have been allotted is peculiarly adapted to our minds, and admirably
fitted to promote our intellectual progress. There can be no reasonable
doubt that it was part of the Creator’s plan. How easily might
the whole order have been transposed ! How readily might we have been
assigned to some complicated system which our feeble and finite powers
could not have unravelled ! to some one, perchance, of the stars,
in the immense cluster of Hercules, where "the countless and unending
orbs" are "in mazy motion intermingled," and where, { Shelley; "The
Daemon of the World. A Fragment" }
“Above, below, around,
The circling systems form
A wilderness of harmony,"
{13} the sound of which would never have penetrated to the desolate
heart of man, nor have stirred his motionless spirit to a divine
thought.
What a contrast to this humanly incomprehensible
world is that in which we have our being, where the obvious simplicity
and regularity of the daily phenomena invite our contemplation with so
fine and irresistible a persuasion; where all the developments of art
and nature occur in a happy and consistent gradation, ascending
amid innumerable forms of beauty to the temple of science ! Had
it been the sole object of the physical universe to contribute to our
intellectual nutriment, its arrangements could not have been more
skilfully contrived. The angel of the Lord is ever sent with the
message of new truth at the time when it is most welcome, when the
heart of philosophy is heavy with the obscure mists which hang over the
paths of knowledge, or when the faith of the fainting world requires
the reviving influence of some brilliant discovery. How wonderful are
the relations in the progress of the observing and the abstract
sciences! With what a profound harmony do they sustain their several
parts in the heaven-born symphony ! . Attracted by the symmetry of a
few graceful curves, geometry undertook their investigation, and
prosecuted the study of their curious and intricate properties, until
ridicule threatened to point at such a useless expenditure of labor.
But when, in the course of its revolving cycles, astronomy had grown to
its grand era, it began by preaching to the astounded doctors of
theology the amazing fact that these selfsame curves have been drawn,
by the Creatures own hand, from the beginning of time, in the paths of
the planet, the comet, and our own fixed earth; and thenceforth the
treatise upon conic sections has become a chapter of the celestial
Principia. And so it has ever been; in the ambitious flights to which
geometry has been impelled by its impatience of the restraints of
observation, it has never soared above the Almighty presence. And so it
must ever be; the true thought of the created mind must have had its
origin from the Creator; {14} but with him thought is reality. It
must then be that the loftiest conceptions of transcendental
mathematics have been outwardly formed, in their complete expression
and manifestation, in some region or other of the physical world; and
that there must always be interwoven with the discoveries of
observation these striking coincidences of human thought and nature's
law. They are the reflections of the divine image of man's spirit from
the clear surface of the eternal fountain of truth. Is then religion so
false to God as to avert its face from science ? Is the Church willing
to declare a divorce of this holy marriage tie ? Can she afford to
renounce the external proof of a God, having sympathy with man ? Dare
she excommunicate science, and answer at the judgment for the souls
which are thus reluctantly compelled to infidelity ? We reject the
authority of the blind Scribes and Pharisees, who have hidden
themselves from the light of heaven under such a darkness of bigotry.
We claim our just rights and our share in the Church. The man of
science is a man, and knows sin as much as other men, and equally with
other men he needs the salvation of the Gospel. We acknowledge that the
revelations of the physical world are addressed to the head, and do not
minister to the wants of the heart; we acknowledge that science
has no authority to interfere with the Scriptures and perplex the Holy
Writ with forced and impossible constructions of language. This
admission does not derogate from the dignity of science; and we claim
that the sanctity of the Bible is equally undisturbed by the denial
that it was endowed with authority over the truths of physical science.
But we, nevertheless, as sons of men, claim our share in its messages
of forgiveness, and will not be hindered of our inheritance by the
unintelligible technicalities of sectarianism; as children, we kneel to
the Church, and implore its sustenance, and entreat the constant aid
and countenance of those great and good men who are its faithful
servants and its surest support, whose presence and cheering sympathies
are a perpetual benediction, and among whom shine the brightest lights
of {15} science as well as of religion. Moreover, as scientific men, we
need the Bible to strengthen and confirm our faith in a supreme
intellectual Power, to assure us that we are not imposing our forms of
thought upon a fortuitous combination of dislocated atoms, but that we
may study His works humbly, hopefully, and trusting that the treasury
is not yet exhausted, but that there is still left an infinite vein of
spiritual ore to be worked by American intellect.
Gentlemen of the American Association, I cannot
conclude without a few words to recall our duty to the country to which
we owe our allegiance. We must despise the base servility to foreign
superiority, which affects to look down from the heights of the
cosmopolite upon the duty of patriotism, and scorn it as an
abomination. We must love our country with the same devoted,
noble, and generous love which inspired the lives of Niebuhr and Arago,
of Bowditch and our late lamented Walker, which is the living fountain
of the labors of men like Humboldt, Henry, and Bache, which won for
Franklin the affection, admiration, and reverence of France, and
without which there can be no worthy respect and esteem for the labors
of the men of other nations. The heart, which is too small to hold its
own country cannot assume to embrace the whole world, and still less to
contain a science. Of all the virtues, patriotism is the least selfish,
and that which is most kindred to the grand sentiments of the heroic
soul. It repels foreign arrogance with dignified contempt, its proud
spirit rejoices to do homage to true greatness wherever it may be
found, and it frankly opens its hospitable door to the reception of the
learned guest of every land. It was the larger half of the greatest
name in history, and from the tomb of Washington it invokes us to be
faithful to posterity.
The time is ripe for some important improvement in the public
condition of science and its relations to government. For the first
time in the history of the republic, "the men of genius of our country,
who, by their inventions and discoveries in science and art, have
contributed largely to the improvements {16} of the age, without
in many instances securing for themselves anything like an adequate
reward," have been commended to the favorable consideration of Congress
by our Chief Magistrate. For this great and good word, let the
benedictions of science rest upon his head. It is now our fault if the
occasion be not properly improved. No government, in proportion to its
opportunities, has surpassed our own in its readiness to promote
science. The Coast Survey, the National Observatory, the Nautical
Almanac, the military and naval academies, the expeditions for
astronomical and other scientific purposes, and the munificent grants
for special researches, are conclusive evidence of the willingness to
advance high and useful forms of philosophical inquiry. The confidence
which has been inspired in other countries is shown in the trust of
that magnificent endowment for the diffusion of knowledge to all
mankind, under whose roof we are here assembled. The provisions for the
election of the Board of Regents and the choice of a Secretary, upon
the singleness of whose integrity and the largeness of whose
comprehension are concentrated the hope and confidence of his
scientific brethren throughout the world, are a guaranty that the honor
of the republic will be held sacred in the discharge of this high
charity, and that it will not be diverted into any local channel from
the enlarged intentions of its testator. Let us profit by the example
of Smithson, and, instructed by the wisdom of this high-minded son of
England, learn to confide in our own rulers. Let us be aroused to an
earnest and harmonious effort to accomplish the plan proposed by our
President at Albany, for the building up of an "institution for
science, supplementary to existing institutions, to guide public action
in reference to scientific matters." With the details of the plan and
the arguments in its favor you are familiar. You know how useful it
would be as a protection from the wasteful expenditure upon abortive
attempts to reverse the laws of nature. You know how much it is
required to sustain the purity and independence of science, even within
its {17} own proper domain.
You know that in no age or country was there ever a more
urgent call for a scientific society, in which scientific influence
should predominate, where it should not be smothered by excess of
patronage, and whence it should not be liable to banishment through any
spirit or form of ostracism. If American genius is not fettered
by the chains of necessity, and helplessly exposed to the assaults of
envious mediocrity, but is generously nourished in the bosom of
liberty, it will joyfully expand its free wings, and soar with the
eagle to the conquest of the skies.