The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-03-04
President Small Gives the First
Lecture.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
HIGHER POWER OF THE MIND.

the Mind Which Ordinarily Do Not Get
Proper Development,
The Woman's Literary Union met
with hard luck in having the first lecture
in the University Extension course come
in conjunction with one of the worst
storms of the season. They were fortu-
nate in their lecturer, however, and those
who braved the storm were well repaid.
President Small explained and illustrated
University Extension in an address that
was at once an explanation and an illus
tration. He warned his hearers at the
outset that he did not propose to enter
tain them simply; he intended to give
them something to labor over mentally,
and he made good his word.
Rev. Dr. Dalton introduced President
Small with pleasant reference to his
recollections of the latter as bright high
school graduate not many years ago. He
spoke of President Smalrs subsequent
attachments and of his new position as
the head of the department of sociology
in the great university which is to be
founded at Chicago. University Exten-
sion, DR.. Dalton said, was the sharing
with others of that mental culture
which fortune makes the passion Of the
few.
President Small, upon being intro
duced, was received with applause and
proceeded to discussion of the nature
and aims of University Extension. He
discussed it under three heads: Its Oc-
casion, The Programme, and the Pecul-
iar Timeliness of it.
Beginning with the occasion the speak
er enlarged upon the fact that University
Extension aims not to give the people
more information; but rather to enlarge
their intellectual capacities. There
were in every New England town a few
people of high and refined intelligence,
capable of the enjoyment of literature,
art and science. There were, moreover,
few men of such intellectual power or
mental genius as to be worthy to cope
with Jonathan Edwards in metaphysi-
cal discussion, Daniel Webster in con-
hands. But if social status should be
vigorously conditioned on discursive
power, on the ability of the mind to la
Dor systematically, accurately and per-
sistently in the solution of problems for
mental investigation, it would require an
extraordinarily liberal census to allow to
even the largest city
An Intellectual Four Hundred.
''We seldom, and then only superficial
ly, think" said DR.. Small. eve OBJ
serve, remember, formulate opinions,
praise, condemn, etc., but this is not
thinking" We have all observed the
wonderful skill, control of every muscle
and perception of the effect of every
movement which the juggler brings into
play in balancing himself upon the pole.
The figure may illustrate the working of
the mind in thought, which is a balanc-
of the self in the control of all of the fac
ulties of the mind. How often do we
perform process of the mind that re-
quires as careful inspection of our minds
as the juggler has to use for the condi-
lions of his body in his most difficult
balancing feats.
The defective thinking capacity of the
general reader is set forth by the pre-
vailing paragraph style of the newspaper
discussions and the popular novels.
The state of public opinion also gives
an index of the Discrimination of the mass
of men to careful thought Although
all will readily recognize that an army
cannot move as fast rs one OF its best SOL
diers might march, or society advance as
fast as some of it's brightest minds, yet
the fact that generation of agitation is
often required to establish a primary
fact is a discouraging comment upon
the thinking power of the public, whose
minds, like the appetite of an epicure,
are debauched by slipping Of this
morsel and that morsel, until they be-
come at first disinclined and then in
capable of real mental work.
The speaker said that the average
thought of the
Choicest Congregations in New England
today was not equal to holding itself to
the appreciation of the profoundest work
Of their best preachers. Repeated ex
periments had shown that, and the
preachers were forced to hold their peo-
pie by discourses far from their ablest.
He merely used this familiar institution
OF new England 10 snow InaI LIE 1Ofln
and grade Of thought used by the most
intelligent congregations was not the
higher grade which we would pronounce
worthy of our intellectual endowment.
This was the reason that University
Extension had been originated, to drill
people in the use of the higher powers
Of their minds, not to give them addi-
tional facts.
Upon the second point, the programme
of university extension, the speaker said
that most men and women leave school
at the time when the ability for close,
abstract thinking, begins to develop. The
programme of university extension is to
carry forward this discipline of the
mind in it's thinking capacities. 1t is
not to give information. Many people
have too much information already,
while they are totally incapable of close
and connected reasoning. University ex-
tension proceeds upon the plan of lead
ing the mind up to the particular subject
to be discussed, and then impslling and
guiding the mind TO q systematic classi-
fication Of that which relates to the sub
ject, scientific inspection of the results
of that classification.