VI PREFACE 



in pursuits remote from the common ways of men, 

 and become habituated to think and speak in the 

 technical dialect of their own little world, as if 

 there were no other. 



If the popular lecture thus, as I believe, 

 finds one moiety of its justification in the self- 

 discipline of the lecturer, it surely finds the 

 other half in its effect on the auditory. For 

 though various sadly comical experiences of the 

 results of my own efforts have led me to entertain 

 a very moderate estimate of the purely intellectual 

 value of lectures ; though I venture to doubt if 

 more than one in ten of an average audience 

 carries away an accurate notion of what the 

 speaker has been driving at ; yet is that not 

 equally true of the oratory of the hustings, of the 

 House of Commons, and even of the pulpit ? 



Yet the children of this world are wise in their 

 generation; and both the politician and the priest 

 are justified by results. The living voice has an 

 influence over human action altogether indepen- 

 dent of the intellectual worth of that which it 

 utters. Many years ago, I was a guest at a great 

 City dinner. A famous orator, endowed with a 

 voice of rare flexibility and power ; a born actor, 

 ranging with ease through every part, from refined 

 comedy to tragic unction, was called upon to reply 

 to a toast. The orator was a very busy man, a 

 charming conversationalist and by no means 

 despised a good dinner; and, I imagine, rose with- 



