The Art of Lecturing Part 4

And until your reading is wide enough to give you this view of them, you had better not attempt course lecturing in the twentieth century.

CHAPTER XIV

PREPARATION

Said Francis Bacon, the author of "Novum Organum," "Reading maketh a full man, writing an exact man, and conversation a ready man."

The first in importance of these is to be "a full man." The lecturer should not deliver himself on any subject unless he has read about all there is of value on that question.

If, when you read, the words all run together in the first few minutes, or, you invariably get a headache about the third page, let lecturing alone. Remember that there must be listeners as well as lecturers, and you may make a good listener, a quality none too common, but, as for lecturing, you have about as much chance of success as a man who could not climb ten rungs of a ladder without going dizzy, would have as a steeplejack.

The speaker who writes out his speech and commits it to memory and then recites it, has at least, this in his favor: his performance represents great labor. An audience usually is, and should be, very lenient with anyone who has obviously labored hard for its benefit.

Writing out a speech has many advantages, and beginners especially should practice it extensively. It gives one precision or, as Bacon puts it, makes an "exact" man. It gives one experience in finding the correct word.

If you have not learned to find the right word at your desk where you have time to reflect, how do you suppose you will find it on the platform where you must go on?

In trying a pa.s.sage in your study it is well to stand about as you would on a platform. My friend Jack London a.s.sured me that when he took to the platform his chief difficulty arose from never having learned to think on his feet.

Writing is also a great test of the value of a point. Many a point that looks brilliant when you first conceive it turns out badly when you try to write it out. On the other hand, an unpromising idea may prove quite fertile when tried out with a pen. It is better to make these discoveries in your study than before your audience.

As to conversation and its making a "ready" man, a better method perhaps, is to argue the matter out with a mirror, or the wall, in about the same manner and style as you expect to use on the platform.

To practice before one or two persons in the style you expect to adopt before an audience is so inherently incompatible with the different circ.u.mstances, that I don't believe anybody ever made it succeed. It is far better to be alone, especially when working out your most important points, and building your opening and closing sentences.

Probably the best form of lecturing is to speak from a few pages of notes. A clearly defined skeleton, in a lecture, as in an animal, is the sure sign of high organization, while it is desirable to fill in the flesh and clothes with a pen beforehand, it will be well to learn to deliver it to the public with nothing but the skeleton before you.

In course lectures, quotations must be read, as a rule, as there is not time enough between lectures to commit them to memory. But where the same lecture is given repeatedly before different audiences, this condition does not exist, and the quotations should be memorized.

Frequent quotations, from the best authorities, is one of the marks of a good lecture, as of a good book.

A good plan is to write out the skeleton of the lecture fully at first, say fifteen or twenty note book pages, then think it carefully over and condense to about ten. A really good, well organized lecture where the lecturer has had ample time, or when he has already delivered it a few times, should be reducible to one or two pages of notes.

This skeletonizing is a good test of a lecture. A mere collection of words has no skeleton. Instead of comparing with a mammal at the top of the organic scale, it is like a formless, undifferentiated protozoon at the bottom.

As an example of a skeleton, here are the notes of the lecture with which I closed the season at the Garrick in May, 1907:

SOCIALISM AND MODERN ETHICAL SCIENCE

(1) The general confusion on this question.

(2) The inroads of positive science into this field.

(3) The historical schools of Ethics: (1) The Theological.

(2) The intuitional.

(3) The utilitarian.

(1) Define these; (2) explain; (3) criticise.

(4) Modern science endorses utilitarianism.

(5) This still leaves unsettled the problem of who shall determine what is of utility to society?

(6) Marx gave the answer--The ruling cla.s.s.

(7) They rule because they control society's foundation, its mode of production.

(8) The working cla.s.s, in order to enforce its own ethics must control society at its base; it must take possession of the means of production.

When I first delivered this lecture I had about twenty pages of notes nearly twice the size of this book page, the three items, "define,"

"explain," "criticize," taking half a dozen.

CHAPTER XV

DEBATING

Really great debaters, like the animal reconstructed, as Bret Harte relates, before "The Society on the Stanislaw," are "extremely rare."

This is because the great debater must have a number of accomplishments any one of which requires something very closely approaching genius.

The great debater must first of all be a brilliant speaker; but he must also be a speaker of a certain kind. Many brilliant speakers are utterly helpless in debate. The most helpless of these is the speaker who is bound closely to his fully written ma.n.u.script or who departs from it only by memorizing the sentences.

A certain preacher in a double walled brick church found a c.h.i.n.k in the inner wall just back of the pulpit. He found this crevice a convenient pigeon hole for his carefully written and always excellent sermon during the preliminary parts of the service. While the congregation sang the last verse of the hymn preceding the sermon he would draw it from its hiding place and lay it on the pulpit. One fatal Sunday he pushed it too far in and it fell between the two walls hopelessly beyond immediate recovery. His anguish during the last verse as the novelists say, "beggared description." He read a chapter from the Bible and dismissed his flock. One cannot imagine such a speaker, brilliant as he was with his pages before him, achieving any success in debate.

The qualities of a great debater may be ranged under two heads: (1) general, (2) technical. The general qualifications must be those of a ready speaker, fully master of his subject and able to think quickly and clearly and to clothe an idea in forceful, suitable language on very short notice. The ability to detect a flaw in an opponent's case does not consist merely in cleverness, but will depend upon the thoroughness of your studies before going on the platform.

The great debater must go to the bottom of things. It is all very well to take an opponent's speech and reply to it point by point, even to the last detail. It is vastly better, however, if you can lay your hands on the fundamental fallacy that underlies the whole case and explode that.

I well remember my debate with Bolton Hall. Mr. Hall's whole case rested on the theory of the existence of certain Nature-given and G.o.d-given rights of man. The apostles of the Single Tax from George down never knew and probably never will know how completely all this has been swept into the dust-bin by modern science. It was only necessary for me to demonstrate the hopelessness of Mr. Hall's main thesis to leave him standing before the audience without so much as the possibility of a real answer.

We shall consider at some length the technical methods that make for effective debating. In my opinion, formed from my own experience, this question of methods is of the greatest importance.

The most important thing in this connection is how to make the best use of the time allowed and always know, while speaking, how much you still have left. You may look at your watch at the beginning of your speech, but once started, the brain, working at full capacity, refuses to remember, and you turn to the chairman and ask "How much time have I?"

This not only wastes your time, but distracts the attention of the audience from your attack or reply. Again, the relief is only temporary, for in a few minutes you are again in the same dilemma. Then, worst of all, right in the middle of an argument, down comes the gavel, and with a lame "I thank you," you sit down. There are men who can carry the time in their heads, but as a rule they are not good debaters, as they do so because only a part of their energies are thrown into the debate itself.

This difficulty hampered me terribly in many debates and the only consolation I could find was that it seemed to hamper my opponents about as much. But it never troubles me now owing to the following simple, but invaluable device: See that your watch is wound, take half a postage stamp, and, as the chairman calls you forth, stick the stamp across the face of your watch in such a position that when the large hand goes into eclipse your time is up. Then place it on the desk where it will be always visible, and the s.p.a.ce between the hand and the line of eclipse always shows your remaining time.

On the occasion of my debate with Mr. Chafin, the last presidential candidate of the Prohibition party, on "Socialism versus Prohibition as a Solution of the Social Problem," Mr. Louis Post, the well-known editor of "The Public," was chairman. He courteously asked us how much warning we needed before the close of our several speeches. Mr. Post is no novice in debate and he looked much surprised when I told him not to warn me at all and that he would have no need of closing me with the gavel. He probably thought I had decided to use only part of the time allowed me. When, at the close of my longest speech I finished a somewhat difficult and elaborate peroration squarely on the last quarter of the last second, Mr. Post's astonishment was so great that he burst out with it to the audience. He said: "Mr. Lewis does not require a chairman; without any help from me in any way he closed that speech right to the moment. I don't know how he does it; it is a mystery to me; I couldn't do it to save my life!"

In my debate with Clarence Darrow on "Non-resistance," at the close of my long speech, when our excellent chairman, Mr. Herbert C. Duce, thought I had lost all track of time and was going to need the gavel, to his surprise, just as my last second expired I turned to Darrow and asked a minute's grace to quote from Tennyson, which Darrow gave with a promptness that scored heavily with the audience.

For some days before a debate I take care that my pocketbook is well supplied with postage stamps.

Another matter of the very first importance is the taking of notes of your opponent's speech and preparing to reply when your turn comes.

During the last few years I have met in debate, Henry George, Jr., Clarence Darrow, M. M. Mangasarian, Professor John Curtis Kennedy, Eugene Chafin, John Z. White, W. F. Barnard, Bolton Hall, H. H.

Hardinge, Chas. A. Windle, editor of "The Iconoclast," and others, all men with a national and many with an international reputation as platform masters. But I have never been able to understand why almost all of them, except Barnard and Kennedy, made almost no real use of their time while I was speaking. The probable reason is that debating has not been cultivated as an art in this country.

They sit quietly in a chair without table or note paper and are satisfied to scribble an occasional note on some sc.r.a.p of paper they seem to have picked up by accident. Clarence Darrow got more out of this easy going method than any man I ever met.

With all deference to the names I have given I must insist that this is no way to debate. It should be done thoroughly and systematically. For my own purposes I have reduced this part of debating to an exact science. I do not dread a debate now as I once did. My only care is to see that I am master of the subject.