TO TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. v 



book is still there, opening its leaves to whomsoever would consult it again, 

 patiently submitting to all kinds of questions that may bethought necessary 

 to propound. But the lecture is fugitive and instantaneous. In reading, on 

 the contrary, nothing hinders comparison, or prevents the judgment, from 

 being exercised almost at the same time with the memory; for we have here, 

 immoveable under our eyes, the expressions of the author. In a lecture, of 

 all the faculties of the mind, scarcely any other than that of memory is in 

 active play, for, it is absolutely necessary, first to catch the words of the 

 professor ; and then, how is one to be certain that he has not misunderstood 

 what he believed he heard ? A word, a phrase, which escape?, a parenthesis 

 badly placed in the discourse, a second of inattention, are enough to lead the 

 auditor into gross mistakes. To what individual has it not happened, in a 

 simple conversation, to be under the necessity, before clearly comprehending 

 to require the repetition of the same thing once or even oflener by his in- 

 terlocutor 1 



How then is it possible not to be mistaken in simply listening to a lecture, 

 in which all cannot be clear, where the thoughts and phrases succeed each 

 other with such rapidity, where the words require, as it were, to be seized 

 upon at the moment of utterance and placed in reserve, by the memory, and 

 not to be submitted, until after a lapse of time, by the pupil, to all the intel- 

 lectual operations necessary for judgment or deduction of opinion. If it 

 is sometimes difficult and even impossible for grave and intelligent men to 

 agree upon the sense which it is proper to attribute to the written phrases of 

 an author, that are under their eyes, how can you expect students to be more 

 successful when they acton words which have passed them, scarcely striking 

 upon their ears? Who has not witnessed amongst young people, between 

 fellow students, disputes about what the professor has said, or has not said, 

 upon what was, or was not the opinion of this one or that, although all of 

 them may have listened to the lecture which gave rise to the dispute 7 How 

 many errors have been propagated in this way; what baseless controversies 

 have thus arisen ; how many men have, in this manner, been even brought 

 to hate each other ! 



He who listens to a lecture without reading afterwards, may be compared 

 to a painter who, having fixed his eye upon a passing object, retires to draw 

 its portrait without having the original before him. 



There is nothing in this, however, which argues against oral teaching. 

 This mode of instruction has the advantage of bringing forward strong 

 images, of keeping the attention awake, of rendering descriptions more clear, 

 if not more correct than those given in books, by mingling gesture with 

 vocal intonation. In a lecture, the professor can watch the eyes of his audi- 

 tors, and pass at once that which a word has sufficed to render intelligible 

 or repeat the same thing when he perceives it was not at first under- 



