50 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



botany, physics, bacteriology, and becoming in its vast development 

 ultimately the "master science." 



In those earlier days we were turning to a new agriculture, an 

 agriculture which was lighted and glorified by science; and to this 

 new agriculture the Agricultural College and Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station was to be the main gate way. Many farmers who 

 watched the work of the institution, and who applied to their own 

 business those teachings that might be applicable, soon came to be en- 

 thusiastic friends of the institution; and thus was developed a wise 

 public policy which from time to time gave more liberal support to 

 the Agricultural College and Experiment Station. The advocates of 

 this education stood upon the high ground that agriculture and in- 

 dustry in general should be studied toward, and developed from, the 

 standpoint of public policy ; and the principle was enunciated that in- 

 stitutions of learning and research existed primarily, not for the bene- 

 fit of particular individuals, but in order to develop certain fields of 

 knowledge, such as agriculture, science, economics, literature, etc., and 

 to stimulate their influence among the people. 



Agricultural education was bringing to the attention of the peo- 

 ple a new standard of life for all men. The old idea, held by many, 

 that the highest life consists in withdrawing from one's fellows, in 

 spending one's days in contemplation, in leading a life which begins 

 and ends with the individual in some hopeless attempt to solve the 

 infinite, was fast passing away. Agricultural education introduced 

 into the world the gospel of service and of doing things, and demon- 

 strated that industry and service detract nothing whatever from art 

 and refinement. 



New problems constantly arose for adjustment, in taking this 

 education and using it for the benefit of all men and the development 

 of industry. It was found that perhaps the most fundamental means 

 for extending new knowledge among the people is the students who 

 come to the College and are educated in it. These students are not 

 educated so much for their own sake as that they may go out and carry 

 into their generation the best that the present has to give. It is be- 

 lieved that for the business of instruction in general no method of 

 propagating truth among the people is so effective as that which goes 

 out from the classroom and laboratories into the minds and hearts of 

 the young men and women. These young people go out and begin 

 new lives; and while the Experiment Station and the scientists dis- 

 cover agricultural improvements, knowledge of which is spread by 

 means of publications and the Agricultural Extension Service, yet we 



