iterary and artistic questions. And I say boldly that to interest in
intellectual pursuits is the essential of education, in comparison with
which all other educational purposes must be called secondary. I do not
consider that a child has been taught to read unless he has been made to
like reading; I find it difficult to think of a man as having received a
classical education if the man, however scholarly, leaves college with
no interest in classical literature such as will lead him to go on
reading for himself. In education the interest is the life. If a system
of instruction gives discipline, method, and even originating power,
without rousing a lasting love for the subject studied, the whole
process is but a mental galvanism, generating a delusive activity that
ceases when the connection between instructor and pupil is broken off.
But if a teacher makes it his first business to stir up an interest in
the matter of study, the education becomes self-continuing when teacher
and pupil have parted, and the subject becomes its own educator. If then
it be conceded that the essence of education is to interest, does it
not seem a soberly practical purpose that we should open up to the whole
nation without exception an interest in intellectual pursuits?

I take my stand on the broad moral ground that every human being, from
the highest to the lowest, has two sides to his life--his work and his
leisure. To be without work in life is selfishness and sloth. But if a
man or woman is so entangled in routine duties as never to command
leisure, we have a right to say to such persons that they are leading an
immoral life. Such an individual has no claim to the title of a working
man, he is a slave. It may be cruel circumstances that have thus
absorbed him in business, but that does not alter the fact: slavery was
a misfortune rather than a fault to those who suffered it, but in any
case to be content with slavery is a crime. Once get society to
recognize the duty of leisure, and there is immediately a scope for such
institutions as University Extension that exist for the purpose of
giving intellectual interests for such leisure time. The movement is
thus one of the greatest movements for the 'raising of the masses.' With
a large section of the people there is, at the present moment, no
conception of 'rising' in life, except that of rising out of one social
rank into another. This last is of course a perfectly legitimate
ambition, but i