Aryan literature, and now the edition of the
translations of the "Sacred Books of the East."

I have left my Lectures very much as I delivered them at Cambridge. I
am fond of the form of Lectures, because it seems to me the most natural
form which in our age didactic composition ought to take. As in ancient
Greece the dialogue reflected most truly the intellectual life of the
people, and as in the Middle Ages learned literature naturally assumed
with the recluse in his monastic cell the form of a long monologue, so
with us the lecture places the writer most readily in that position in
which he is accustomed to deal with his fellow-men, and to communicate
his knowledge to others. It has no doubt certain disadvantages. In a
lecture which is meant to be didactic, we have, for the sake of
completeness, to say and to repeat certain things which must be familiar
to some of our readers, while we are also forced to leave out
information which, even in its imperfect form, we should probably not
hesitate to submit to our fellow-students, but which we feel we have not
yet sufficiently mastered and matured to enable us to place it clearly
and simply before a larger public.

But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. A lecture, by keeping a
critical audience constantly before our eyes, forces us to condense
our subject, to discriminate between what is important and what is
not, and often to deny ourselves the pleasure of displaying what may
have cost us the greatest labor, but is of little consequence to other
scholars. In lecturing we are constantly reminded of what students are
so apt to forget, that their knowledge is meant not for themselves
only, but for others, and that to know well means to be able to teach
well. I confess I can never write unless I think of somebody for whom
I write, and I should never wish for a better audience to have before
my mind than the learned, brilliant, and kind-hearted assembly by
which I was greeted in your University.

Still I must confess that I did not succeed in bringing all I wished
to say, and more particularly the evidence on which some of my
statements rested, up to the higher level of a lecture; and I have
therefore added a number of notes containing the less-organized matter
which resisted as yet that treatment which is necessary before our
studies can realize their highest purpose, that of feeding,
invigorating, and inspiriting the minds of others.

Yours affectionately,

F.