upon which, here and there, Catholics are now embarking, and which we have named at the head of this article.

If there ever could be a real controversy between the spoken word and the written word, the question, such as it was, stood at a certain degree of controversial fervor several centuries before Christ. The state of the question then was, not merely about any extra degree of pleasantness in the spoken more than in the written word. This might evidently be admitted, that there was more pleasantness, more variety, more facility of understanding. The question was much more trenchant than that, when Socrates was arguing upon the subject with his friend Phædrus. It was simply whether the word when written was intelligible at all, unless it was first spoken, and heard as spoken, and understood as explained by him who spoke it; whether the written word was practically intelligible at all, unless the spoken word was beforehand in preoccupying the learner's mind; and, more than that, whether subsequently it continued to retain any value except as explained continually and interpreted by the traditional word, which "like a father," said the sage, has to defend the written page and to help it, since "it can neither defend nor help itself."

The whole passage of arms between Socrates and Phædrus is entertaining, and may be recounted here. The sage is telling his young friend a story. He says, the Egyptian god Thoth was the inventor of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, drafts and dice, and also of letters. With these inventions in his hand, the god approaches the king of Egypt, Thamous, and recommends him to make them known to the Egyptians. Thamous, however, is cautious; he does not take things unconditionally. He criticizes favorably or otherwise; and at last he comes to the letters of the alphabet. Ah! these, O King! says the god who invented them, will make your subjects wiser, and will improve their memory. Most ingenious Thoth! answers King Thamous, it is your fatherly affection for your own offspring that makes you talk of these letters so. Indeed they will neither improve the memory of my subjects, nor make their intellects wiser. Whoever uses your letters will rely on them instead of practising his memory. At best they are good only as reminders. Then, as to wisdom, your letters will make folks think themselves wise, without being at all so. They will think they know a great deal, while they have no judgment of their own to make their knowledge worth anything.

To this Phædrus replies: You are a great hand, Socrates, at telling stories from Egypt or any other country.

My dear Phædrus, answers the sage, do you know that, in times. gone by, they made oracular responses come out of an oak? Men of olden time were not as wise as you young men. They

would listen to an oak or a rock, if only they could get the truth out of it. But you young gentlemen don't look for the truth. What you want to know is, who says it, and where was he born, and where does the story come from, not—is it true?

Phædrus submits to the rebuke. Socrates continues: The written word has one unfortunate characteristic about it, common to itself and to painting. Take a picture. It is life-like. But ask it a question; it is dumb. So is it with writing. You think that it speaks to you with some meaning. But ask now what that meaning is. Lo! there it stands with just the same word in its mouth. When once a thing is written it may be tossed over by all who read it, and it cannot say another word to explain itself, nor can it stop saying what it says. It knows neither how to speak nor how to be silent with the proper persons. And if you maltreat it or slander it, why, it must have its father come and help it, for it cannot defend or help itself. What is its father, what is its lawful brother, that knows how to defend itself and to defend the written. word, that knows how to speak and to be silent with the proper persons? That is the spoken word engraving itself on the disciple's soul, with true knowledge; the spoken and animated word, whereof the written one is but a shadow.

My dear Phædrus, it is an earnest work in a high sense, when one, using the art of the living word, takes hold of fitting souls; and plants therein living words of true knowledge able to help themselves and their planter, words not fruitless, but having seed. And from that seed springs up a posterity of truthful minds, fit for immortality.

The plea for the spoken word, thus put forward by the great old philosopher of common sense, cannot fall under suspicion as having been specially conceived to condemn either private judgment in religion or the modern text-book in schools. Yet it condemns both, and many other things besides. The one point which it makes salient at all times and at all ages of life is communication by word of mouth. Not only," faith comes by hearing," but everything in the way of enlightenment must own a certain degree of indebtedness in the same direction. However, we must be more definite here.

Oral teaching, to use the term in any strict sense, is imparted either in the school-room or in the lecture hall. In the schoolroom it is not called lecturing; nor is any form of oral teaching, which is at all appropriate there, to be confused with the notion of what is properly a lecture. This is very evident if we speak of primary education. But in secondary education likewise, or what we mean by liberal studies, it is only slowly that the lecture begins to find a place. According as the mind of the student begins to

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be independent, and to show the results of careful and stimulating development, according as the trained mind begins to possess some material of its own, and some initiative too, wherewith it can work on a hint given or kindle at a suggestion, does the function of lecturing first appear inceptively and tentatively upon the scene of his studies. And this is the point at which the student may now consider himself introduced to the studies of a university.

We do not intend to speak of the university lecture, although it is the only one strictly so called and in the full sense. It may be delivered from the pulpit; and then it is the sacred lecture. We mean to speak of the popular form, which no doubt was originally an outgrowth of the university. It was an indulgence in higher studies, brought out of the lecture hall, and brought down from the professor's chair, to elevate the busy thoughts and to refresh the thirsty souls of men deeply occupied outside. Whoever first made the lecture popular, and brought it out into the living, active world, may be credited with having accomplished the same work as Socrates in other days. He, says Cicero, called down philosophy from heaven to earth, and brought it into cities and houses, and made it modify life and shape manners, and try the good and evil of things. He assigned it a province of its own, very wide and very important. That was to move about amid the thoughts and actions of the daily practical man, and do there what religion should have done, if there had been a religion then to do it. But as there was then no religion worthy of the name, the work which had to be done with men's minds and hearts was attempted by the philosopher's lecture, or, rather, in the case of Socrates, by the philosopher's talk and catechism. This was the express profession subsequently of the philosophers down to Seneca and Epictetus; and it is an instructive fact. For to-day a large portion of the cultured world pretends to acknowledge no religion. Now, if the lecturer do not undertake in some part that work of religion, with the appliances and aids of positive truth and latent sentiment, which the old philosophers knew nothing of, the work of religion must remain unattempted and the pathway to faith remain for many a man practically unknown.

Though we are going to speak of the popular form of lecturing, yet before we leave the university and the professor's chair, there are several interesting lessons to be learnt from positive facts connected with that subject. One regards the habits of mind in an audience; the other regards the financial working of popular schemes.

As to the habits of mind in any body of hearers, it may be observed that for regular university purposes two conditions seem requisite. One is, that the hearers show the results of prior train

In

ing, and be in possession of prior material, up to that point which the lecture to be delivered presupposes. The other condition is, that they command a degree of independent initiative and of mental vigor decided enough to work upon suggestions given, and to follow out a line designated. Now, with the popular lecturer addressing a mixed audience the state of things is not the same as with the university lecturer. In our mixed populations, and in the audiences which our Catholic popular lecturers are likely to gather before them, it rarely happens that they may take for granted the prior training and liberal education which the university lecturer has a right to presuppose. As to the independent initiative and mental vigor, which is the second condition to be noticed in an audience, there are some useful reflections which arise here. the populations which we see around us, and which we notice to be so appreciative of educational results, we cannot fail to observe that many a young man, as well as many an elderly person, flocks to lectures not merely popular, but also of a university grade, in the fond hope of supplying at a leap what they feel to be a great deficiency in themselves, through the want of liberal studies. Their good will in the effort is seldom adequate for success. Difficulties beset their path; and they are difficulties both negative and positive. The deficiencies in the line of prior development are negative; as is also the want of previous material duly gathered and set in order. But there are, besides, positive obstructions to be encountered, in the preoccupation of the mind with crude, cross, mixed-up notions, which have been picked up everywhere, and which now obscure the vision, and make the rays of truth struggle into the mind as through a jungle or a thicket. Thus many a willing mind is hopelessly slow in feeling the cogency of a truth; it is at a loss what to do with new mental contributions; it knows not how to arrange them and where to locate them, so as to make them fit in gracefully with all the rest of its knowledge.

We are speaking of real lecturing, and of significant instruction. It is quite possible that one may profess to lecture and succeed only in entertaining. If the effort does not convey what is worthy of a permanent place in the mind either developed or maturing, it can be styled a lecture only by courtesy. It is properly an entertainment of a literary or artistic kind, and it may possibly convey what a carriage drive or a summer tour might teach. But that is only refreshing and entertaining; it is not lecturing.

There is another lesson which may be gathered from the professor's chair. It is on a very practical point, without which nothing can live. Finances are of vital importance in the endeavor to do good, and any facts or items of information which may throw light upon this subject are undoubtedly of prime consequence to

Catholics in their endeavors to promote true culture. It may be that plain facts here will sober down undue exhilaration of spirits; but they need not therefore extinguish noble ambition.

There is now going on in Great Britain an enterprise called the University Extension movement. It is under auspices that are most favorable and most fashionable. Powerful interest and enlightened taste combine to further the undertaking, and the utmost economy is observed to make the good of higher education extend as widely, because as cheaply, as possible. Just one difficulty meets the execution of the programme, and that is the finances. The facts are these: A body of authorized teachers, taken from the most highly-trained and successful graduates of the University, are formed to travel about the country and answer the demands made upon them for series of lectures, to be delivered in sets of not less than twelve lectures each. A number of such series, regularly attended, and finished with appropriate and strict examinations, will eventually raise an auditor to a valuable university degree. Those who can apply for such series of lectures, to be thus brought right down to their homes, are not only philosophical societies and institutes, free and subscription libraries, but also any special society or company formed for the purpose. Now, when these are happily managed and the audiences made large, it is found that the total charge for one of the courses need not exceed three shillings for the whole set of twelve lectures. Yet the financial difficulty is described as being the greatest thus far met with. It affects the lecturers, though they have the rich university at their back; and it affects the hearers, though these have not to leave their homes, but can receive the university advantages right at their doors. It is a curious development in the cause of culture. It is said that the lectures are assiduously frequented by all classes of society alike, and yet the seekers after knowledge do not seem to value knowledge at its cost price.

These are remarks which we are quoting from a scientific reviewer on the movement. We might add a reflection of our own. It would appear as if the divine law of giving, and receiving not, were the only one by which higher education could ever be imparted. Here we see that in a country like Great Britain, where traditions preponderate towards the esteem and use of higher studies, a popular and liberal project, with professorial ability thrown in without stint, must struggle in order to live, and that, too, when the pittance needed to live well is but a nominal fee. Nor is it a Catholic body that has the matter in hand. The suspicion arises in our mind that perhaps the professors of higher education have a latent vocation to become a new order of Knights of Science, vowed to poverty, if the spirit of science would only