The Bishop of Durham delivered an impressive address on the
University Extension movement in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House last Saturday. The subject was the indis- pensableness of high ideals to any life worth living. Man, he said, "partly is, and wholly hopes to be." The word progress' is unmeaning without reference to an ideal. Ideals are "the meat and drink of life?! They support us and they rule us. And the value of University teaching is, that it tends ever more and more to sustain ideals. It groups the various departments of knowledge so as to impress us with their
mutual relation to each other. It is catholic in its tastes, loving both to restore the past, and to welcome what is fresh and full of promise. It is tolerant of all things except one- sided arrogance. It is equalising, chastening, personal, spiritual. It should always show where our knowledge breaks away into the infinite. All this is excellent doctrine as to what University teaching should be, but it is certainly a sanguine view of what University Extension classes are. Dryasdust lecturers are, alas not uncommon, and it may be doubted whether books, even selected with some of the hap-hazard of eager instinct, may not do quite as much for eager minds, as the average teacher of a miscellaneous class-room.
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