ecture well--that is, with profit to the listeners and
without boring them--one must have, besides talent, experience and a
special knack; one must possess a clear conception of one's own powers,
of the audience to which one is lecturing, and of the subject of one's
lecture. Moreover, one must be a man who knows what he is doing; one
must keep a sharp lookout, and not for one second lose sight of what
lies before one.

A good conductor, interpreting the thought of the composer, does twenty
things at once: reads the score, waves his baton, watches the singer,
makes a motion sideways, first to the drum then to the wind-instruments,
and so on. I do just the same when I lecture. Before me a hundred and
fifty faces, all unlike one another; three hundred eyes all looking
straight into my face. My object is to dominate this many-headed
monster. If every moment as I lecture I have a clear vision of the
degree of its attention and its power of comprehension, it is in my
power. The other foe I have to overcome is in myself. It is the infinite
variety of forms, phenomena, laws, and the multitude of ideas of my own
and other people's conditioned by them. Every moment I must have the
skill to snatch out of that vast mass of material what is most important
and necessary, and, as rapidly as my words flow, clothe my thought in a
form in which it can be grasped by the monster's intelligence, and may
arouse its attention, and at the same time one must keep a sharp lookout
that one's thoughts are conveyed, not just as they come, but in a
certain order, essential for the correct composition of the picture I
wish to sketch. Further, I endeavour to make my diction literary, my
definitions brief and precise, my wording, as far as possible, simple
and eloquent. Every minute I have to pull myself up and remember that
I have only an hour and forty minutes at my disposal. In short, one has
one's work cut out. At one and the same minute one has to play the part
of savant and teacher and orator, and it's a bad thing if the orator
gets the upper hand of the savant or of the teacher in one, or _vice
versa_.

You lecture for a quarter of an hour, for half an hour, when you
notice that the students are beginning to look at the ceiling, at Pyotr
Ignatyevitch; one is feeling for his handkerchief, another shifts in his
seat, another smiles at his thoughts.... That means that their attention
is flagging. Something must be done. Taking advantage of the fir