This paper deals with the ground state of an interacting electron gas in an external potential $v(\mathrm{r})$. It is proved that there exists a universal functional of the density, $F[n(\mathrm{r})]$, independent of $v(\mathrm{r})$, such that the expression $E\ensuremath{\equiv}\ensuremath{\int}v(\mathrm{r})n(\mathrm{r})d\mathrm{r}+F[n(\mathrm{r})]$ has as its minimum value the correct ground-state energy associated with $v(\mathrm{r})$. The functional $F[n(\mathrm{r})]$ is then discussed for two situations: (1) $n(\mathrm{r})={n}_{0}+\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{n}(\mathrm{r})$, $\frac{\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{n}}{{n}_{0}}\ensuremath{\ll}1$, and (2) $n(\mathrm{r})=\ensuremath{\phi}(\frac{\mathrm{r}}{{r}_{0}})$ with $\ensuremath{\phi}$ arbitrary and ${r}_{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$. In both cases $F$ can be expressed entirely in terms of the correlation energy and linear and higher order electronic polarizabilities of a uniform electron gas. This approach also sheds some light on generalized Thomas-Fermi methods and their limitations. Some new extensions of these methods are presented.