The ordinary lecturer may
achieve a series of complete _seances_--the unity being the _seance_.
But a scientific course ought to aim at something more--at a general
unity of subject and of exposition.
Has this concise, substantial, closely-reasoned kind of work been useful
to my class? I cannot tell. Have my students liked me this year? I am
not sure, but I hope so. It seems to me they have. Only, if I have
pleased them, it cannot have been in any case more than a _succes
d'estime_; I have never aimed at any oratorical success. My only object
is to light up for them a complicated and difficult subject. I respect
myself too much, and I respect my class too much, to attempt rhetoric.
My role is to help them to understand. Scientific lecturing ought to be,
above all things, clear, instructive, well put together, and convincing.
A lecturer has nothing to do with paying court to the scholars, or with
showing off the master; his business is one of serious study and
impersonal exposition. To yield anything on this point would seem to me
a piece of mean utilitarianism. I hate everything that savors of
cajoling and coaxing. All such ways are mere attempts to throw dust in
men's eyes, mere forms of coquetry and stratagem. A professor is the
priest of his subject; he should do the honors of it gravely and with
dignity.
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