2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ment is more familiar than tlie idea for which, it stands. It is the 

 purpose, then, of the present article to state briefly — as becomes 

 the importance of the subject — just what university extension is, 

 somewhat of its history, and what claim it has for a permanent 

 place in our intellectual life. 



University extension has been well defined as a university 

 education for the whole nation by an itinerant system connected 

 with established institutions. 



I confess that this sounds ideal, the proposition to educate the 

 whole nation on higher lines, but that is precisely what the move- 

 ment means. It means that any one in any place and at any time 

 may take up advanced work in any department of human knowl- 

 edge, and that qualified men stand ready and willing to help him. 

 I feel that this is a most significant statement — so significant. 

 Indeed, that I may be pardoned for having said the same thing 

 twice. 



Our people as a whole are not intellectual and are not culture- 

 loving. They are not given to what Emerson calls the reasonable 

 service of thought. The majority of them are the servants of a 

 much less noble master. It can not be expected, therefore, that so 

 large an idea as forms the germ of university extension will meet 

 with anything like immediate fruition. But it is a leaven which 

 is well worth setting to work. The success of the movement is 

 already well enough assured to demonstrate that in any com- 

 munity there are unsuspected numbers with a turn for higher 

 education, and such an attitude of mind is apt to spread. 



That is the end — to permeate the nation, the whole American 

 people, with a taste for culture, and then to provide means for 

 satisfying it. It is admitted that such a taste does not generally 

 exist, but it is believed that it can be brought into being. No 

 right-minded person, I think, will quarrel with this purpose, pro- 

 vided it can be shown that the proposed culture is genuine and 

 not merely a veneer. The method, too, is correspondingly simple, 

 and it seems to me quite adequate. It would be an impossible 

 task to civilize all America at once. The Philistine element is 

 much too strong for that. If the movement attempted such a 

 task it might well be regarded as overly optimistic. But it is 

 really as practical in its methods as a paper-box factory. It is 

 going to attempt no regeneration in the lump, nor to force its 

 wares where they are not wanted. What it is doing and going to 

 do is simply this, to put the higher education within reach of 

 those who care for it, and through these to stimulate others also 

 to want the same thing. It might be well described as a mission- 

 ary movement conducted on scientific principles. 



Unharnessed to events, the scheme would read somewhat like 

 a dream. It will be better, then, to give an account of it by telling 



