March 27, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



177 



books, the ideas of the university being circulated through 

 the country as a whole, while residence at a university is re- 

 served as the apex only of the university system. 



An itinerancy implies central and local management, and 

 travelling lecturers who connect the two. The central man- 

 agement is a university, or its equivalent. This is responsi- 

 ble for the educational side of the movement, and negotiates 

 for the supply of its courses of instruction at a fixed price 

 per course.^ The local management may be in the hands of 

 a committee formed for the purpose, or of some local insti- 

 tution — such as a scientific or literary club or institute — 

 wfhich may care to connect itself with the universities. On 

 the local management devolves the raising funds for the 

 university fee and for local expenses, as well as the duty of 

 putting the advantages of the course offered before the local 

 community. The widest diversity of practice prevails in 

 reference to modes of raising funds. A considerable part of 

 the cost will be met by the tickets of those attending the 

 lectures, the prices of which I have known to vary from a 

 shilling to a guinea for the unit course, while admission to 

 single lectures has varied from a penny to half a crown. 

 But all experience goes to show that only a part of this cost 

 can be met in this way. Individual courses may bring in a 

 handsome profit, but, taking account over various terms 

 and various districts, we find that not more than two-thirds 

 of the total cost will be covered by ticket-money. And 

 even this is estimated on the assumption that no more than 

 the unit course is aimed at; while even for this the choice of 

 subjects, and the chance of continuity of subject from term 

 to term, are seriously limited by the considei-ation of meet- 

 ing cost as far as possible from fees. University extension is 

 a system of higher education ; and higher education has no 

 market value, but needs the help of endowment. But the 

 present age is no way behind past ages in the number of 

 generous citizens it exhibits as ready to help good causes. 

 The millionnaire who will take up university extension will 

 leave a greater mark on the history of his country than even 

 the pious founder of university scholarships and chairs; and, 

 even if individuals fail us, we have the common purse of 

 the public or the nation to fall back upon. 



The itinerant lecturers, not less than the university and the 

 local management, have responsibility for the progress of 

 the cause. An extension lecturer must be something more 

 tban a good teacher, something more even than an attractive 

 lecturer: he must be imbued with the ideas of the move- 

 ment, and ever on the watch for opportunities of putting 

 them forward. It is only the lecturer who can maintain in 

 audiences the feeling that they are not simply receiving en- 

 tertainment or instruction which they have paid for, but 

 that they are taking part in a public work, and are responsi- 

 ble for giving their locality a worthy place in a national 

 scheme of university education. The lectui'er, again, must 

 mediate between the local and the central management, 

 always ready to assist local committees with suggestions 

 from the experience of other places, and equally attentive 

 to bringing the special wants of different centres before the 

 university authorities. The movement is essentially a teach- 

 ing movement, and it is to the body of teachers I look for 

 the discovery of the further steps in the development of 

 popular education. For such a purpose lecturers and direct- 

 ors alike must be imbued with the missionary spirit, for 

 university extension is a missionary university, not content 

 with supplying culture, but seeking to stimulate the demand 

 for it. This is just the point in which education in the past has 

 ' The Cambridge fee is ,£45 per course of ttiree months. 



shown badly in comparison with religion or politics. When 

 a man is touched with religious ideas, he seeks to make con- 

 verts; when he has views on political questions, he agitates 

 to make his views prevail. Culture, on the other band, has 

 been only too often cherished as a badge of exclusiveness, 

 instead of the very consciousness of superior education being 

 felt as a responsibility which could only be satis8ed by 

 efforts to educate others. To infuse a missionary spirit into 

 culture is not the least purpose of university extension. 



I cannot resist the temptation to carry forward this thought 

 from the present into the future. In university extension so 

 described, may we not see a germ for the university of the 

 future ? I have made the foundation of our movement the 

 growing conception of education as a permanent interest of 

 adult life side by side with religion and politics. The change 

 is at best only beginning: it tasks the imagination to con- 

 ceive all it will imply when it is complete. To me it appears 

 that this expanding view of education is the third of the 

 three great waves of change the succession of which has 

 made up our modern history. There was a time when re- 

 ligion itself was identified with a particular class, the clergy 

 alone thinking out what the rest of the nation simply ac- 

 cepted ; then came the series of revolutions popularly 

 summed up as the Reformation, by which the whole adult 

 nation claimed to think for itself in matters of religion, and 

 tlip special profession of the clergy became no more than a 

 single element in the religious life of the nation. Again, 

 there has been in the past a distinct governing class, to which 

 the rest of society submitted, until a series of political revo- 

 lutions lifted the whole adult population into self-govern- 

 ment, using the services of political experts, but making 

 public progress the interest of all. Before the more quiet 

 changes of the present age, the conception of an isolated 

 learned class is giving way before the ideal of a national 

 culture, in which universities will still be centres for educa- 

 tional experts; while university extension offers liberal edu- 

 cation to all, until educationally the whole adult population 

 will be just as much within the university as politically the 

 adult population is within the constitution. It would appear, 

 then, that the university of such a future would be by no 

 means a repetition of existing types, such as Oxford or 

 Cambridge, Harvard or Johns Hopkins. These institutions 

 would exist, and be more flourishing than ever, but they 

 would all be merged in a wider "University of England," 

 or '■ University of America; " and just as the state means the 

 whole nation, acting in its political capacity through mu- 

 nicipal or national institutions, so the university would 

 mean the whole adult nation, acting in its educational ca- 

 pacity through whatever institutions might be found de- 

 sirable. Such a university would never be chartered ; no 

 building could ever house it; no royal personage or Presi- 

 dent of the United States would ever be asked to inaugurate 

 it. The very attempt to found it would imply misconception 

 of its essential character. It would be no more than a float- 

 ing aggi-egation of voluntary associations. Like the compa- 

 nies of which a nation's commerce is made up, such associa- 

 tions would not be organized, but would simply tend to 

 co-operate because of their common object. Each association 

 would have its local and its central side, formed for the pur- 

 pose of mediating between the wants of a locality and the 

 educational supply offered by universities or similar central 

 institutions. No doubt such a scheme is widely different 

 from the ideal education of European countries, so highly 

 organized from above that the minister of education can look 

 at his watch and know at anv moment all that is being done 



