fund which would
be calculated best to meet the intent of the testator, and prove
most beneficial to mankind.

During the eight years intervening between this message and the
passage of the bill for the incorporation of the Smithsonian
Institution, much discussion was had in and out of Congress, as to
the best method of making effective the intention of the testator.

In the light of events, some of the many plans suggested are even now
of curious interest. The establishment of a magnificent national library
at the Capital; the founding of a great university; of a normal
school; a post graduate school; and astronomical observatory "equal
to any in the world," are a few of the plans from time to time
proposed and earnestly advocated.

The act of incorporation in 1846, the appointment of a Board of
Regents, and the selection of a Secretary, mark the beginning of
the Smithsonian Institution. In the selection of a Secretary, the
chief officer of the institution, the regents builded better
than they knew. The choice fell upon Professor Joseph Henry of
Princeton, then peerless among men of science in America. The
appointment was accepted, and the essential features of the plan
of organization he proposed were adopted in December, 1847.
This plan recognized as

"Fundamental that the terms 'increase' and 'diffusion' should
receive literal interpretation in accordance with the evident
intention of the testator; that such terms being logically distinct,
the two purposes mentioned in the bequest were to be kept in view in
the organization of the institution; that the increase of knowledge
should be effected by the encouragement of original researches
of the highest character; and its diffusion by the publication
of the results of original research, by means of the publication
of a series of volumes of original memoirs; that the object of the
institution should not be restricted in favor of any particular
kind of knowledge; if to any, only to the higher and more abstract,
to the discovery of new principles rather than that of isolated
facts; that the institution should in no sense be national; that
the bequest was intended for the benefit of mankind in general,
and not for any single nation.

"The accumulation and care of collections of objects of nature and
art, the development of a library, the providing of courses of
lectures, and the organization of a system of meteorological
observation, were to be only incidental