500 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



any of our present costly appliances. It is vain to attempt to 

 picture the marvels of the future. Progress, as Dean Swift ob- 

 served, may be too fast for endurance. Sufficient for this gener- 

 ation are the wonders thereof. — Nature. 



THE NATIONALIZATION OF UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 



Br Pkof. C. HANFOED HENDERSON. 



I HAVE read with attention the editorial comment on univer- 

 sity extension, published in the November number of this 

 magazine, and I am glad to see the subject given so much premi- 

 nence. The movement has still much of the plasticity of youth, 

 and any discussion regarding its proper ends and aims, or of the 

 means by which these are to be gained, can never be more 

 helpful than now. The present opportunity, it seems to me, is a 

 very large one, and we need the fullest and most impersonal play 

 of thought upon all questions connected with the extension 

 scheme. It is with this feeling in mind that I welcome most 

 heartily the editorial dissent from the proposition to make the 

 work a national activity. The proposition is assuredly a grave 

 one, not only as regards university extension, but even more 

 because it involves a distinct principle of governmental policy, 

 which is either to be courted or to be shunned. 



If I may ask for a little further space, I should like to add a 

 word concerning this proposition, which, it is needless to say, was 

 not lightly made. And I should like to speak again, not so much 

 in defense of the proposition— for one must not, in such an inquiry, 

 allow one's self the attitude of an advocate— as to point out that 

 there is another way of looking at national co-operation with uni- 

 versity extension than as a subsidy for the movement. And I am 

 the more ready to speak, because it seems to me that perhaps the 

 editorial dissent is not so much against the proposition actually 

 made in the article under discussion, as against a proposition 

 which migU have been made, and was not, but which presented 

 itself to the mind of the critic as he read. 



It is objected that university extension must depend for its 

 success upon individual zeal and public spirit— to which, of course, 

 I fully agree— and that government aid would defeat this purpose. 

 But such a result is by no means necessary. It would depend 

 entirely upon the way in which the aid was given. At present, 

 university extension centers are established quite by private action, 

 and the societies for the extension of university teaching simply 

 co-operate with the local center in providing lecturers, issuing 

 syllabi, and the like. The local center, be it remembered, meets 



