Excerpt from The University Review, Vol. 6 The lecture, then, is not to be regarded as an end in itself, but only as a means to a further and better end; its value is instrumental, not final. Its function is to provide the introduction to the subject, to make possible the independent study of its literature, to initiate the student into its mysteries, but nothing more. Both the teacher and the student need to be reminded of this essential limitation of its function. Whenever a higher or more permanent value is attached to it, whenever it is allowed to stand between the student and the literature, whenever it becomes the medium of the conveyance of a ready-made system from the mind of the lecturer to that of the student, its essential purpose is defeated, and it becomes an evil rather than a good. Hence the short ness of its lease of life. The student is always outgrowing it, the lecture is always superseding itself; and the true lecturer will rejoice in this self-effacement, will see in this loss of his occupation the very crown of his labours. And when he meets. In an honours class, the (lite of academic students, he will probably refuse to lecture to them, and will insist upon their regarding him rather as their fellow-student than as their teacher in the old sense. He will recognise that the time for the lecture has passed, and that the time for the laboratory or seminar method has arrived. The time for the lecture is at the beginning of the study of the subject; its value even at that stage is merely instrumental' once that stage is passed, once the student has been 1ntroduced to the subject, it loses even that instrumental value, and arrests rather than promotes his further progress. But wherein, it will still be asked, lies the peculiar value of the lecture as an introduction to the subject? Wherein consists its superiority to the printed treatise? The answer is that its value is that of the spoken, as distinguished from that of the written word. This is suggested by Sidgwick's exceptions to the general condemnation which he passes upon the lecture. The lecture which he condemns is the merely expository lecture, that is, the lecture whose object is merely to convey information. Among the lectures which he excepts are lectures of which the method is dialectic and not simply expository, and lectures on any subject whatever that are intended to stimulate interest rather than to convey information; and he acknowledges the counterbalancing advantages which the listener's position has as compared with the reader's. He further admits that it may be fairly urged that the line which I have tried to draw, between lectures designed to arouse interest and lectures designed to give information, is only partially tenable; since a good lecture will stimulate while informing, more than the same discourse would do if printed, through the effect of personal presence and utterance in stirring intellectual sympathy. The object of a philosophical lecture is so to state the question as to arouse the student's interest in it, to make it his own question, and thus to set him thinking about it for himself - to arouse philo sophic thought by arousing interest in the problems of philosophic thought. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.