MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE LECTURE DEPARTMENT.

Auckland Examiner, Volume 1, Issue 50, 26 November 1857, Page 3

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE LECTURE DEPARTMENT.

Few attend Mechanic’s Institute Lectures or take the slightest interest in them. Formerly we had a well attended Lecture once each week. The Lecture Committee may now with strictest possible regard for truth say — Nous avons change tout cela. Yes, they have changed Lecture department success into Lecture department failure. We can remember when crowds attended on successive Tuesday evenings to hear what might be heard. Ever since the Lecture Committee grew frightened at their own success, they have shown a rare alacrity in sinking. For various reasons, or rather on various pretexts, it was determined to have Lectures once a fortnight instead of once a week. So admirable have been the arrangements for failure that now they have fortnightly Lectures delivered to a beggarly account of empty seats, by way of improvement upon weekly Lectures to crowded and delighted audiences. Are those who were wont to attend on Tuesday evenings changed ? Decidedly yes. Why ? That question is worth thinking about. A few days ago, while looking at the Launceston Examiner, our editorial eye caught an “ Address” delivered on the Bth of October, in Melbourne Mechanic’s Institute by its President. One passage of that Address runs thus :— “ The Lectures delivered this year, whilst undoubtedly filling up the session, had not been successful as educational efforts; nor had they helped to give the Institute a better hold on public sympathies.” From this authoritative statement we judge that the Melbourne Mechanic’s Institute Lecture Department is a failure. Its President ascribes the failure to want of paid Lecturers. He believes that under such “ penny wise and pound foolish” system, “ the men who should Lecture, and are fully qualified, hold back.” Not only is the Mechanic’s Institute Lecture department a fail ure here and in Melbourne, but everywhere. Attention has frequently been drawn to the subject by able writers for the Sydney press. From an excellent article on Educational Institutions we take the following apropos remarks : — “ The constant advance that is being made in the popular methods of imparting instruction to all classes have been brought forcibly under our notice by perusing the Fourth Report of the Working Men’s Educational Union. This is a society established recently in London for the purpose of urging forward adult education, and which seems to have met with considerable success. It aims rather to help than supersede existing institutions, and has devoted its efforts to increase the number of adult classes, to promote the delivery of Lectures, and to improve the customary methods of conducting both. Especially it has aimed

at providing pictorial illustn tions of subjects on which information is desirable, and of topics that form the frequent subjects of Lectures. It is a. common complaint with those who endeavor to keep Mechanic’s Institutes a-going, that the class that most needs teaching will not attend Lectures. The subjects are either too dry, or require a closer attention than the hearers in their comparatively Uneducated and undisciplined mental condition are able or willing to command. Under these circumstances, to address the eye as well as the ear is found to remove the difficulty to a large extent; for adults as well as children comprehend and enjoy pictorial lessons far better than those that are merely descriptive. The wonderful success that has attended the publication of the Illustrated London News, shows how readily the public seize on pictured information. The Working Men’s Educational Union has applied the principle to systematic adult education, and prepared several series of excellent i lustrative diagrams for use in Lectures and Classes,”

Our own experience of Mechanic’s Institute Lecture management is quite in accordance with the statements we have quoted from the Melbourne and Sydney press. Those statements are significant. They show that neither in Melbourne nor in Sydney are Mechanic’s Institute Lectures popular. Managers of those Institutes are for most part (the fact is asserted on strength of personal experience) afraid to make the Mechanic’s Institute Lecture more attractive than the Public House Concert. People run in crowds to be amused. So they would to be instructed if instruction were associated with the progressive and the amusing. Hoping that crowds wiil run to hear men stand up, as stiff as an equal number of Jacks in the box, and “ talk like a book” till tired hearers are talked to sleep, is indeed to hope against hope. The Mechanic’s Institute should be the Mechanic’s school of philosophy. By philosophy we do not mean barren systems of impossible ethics, or eloquent mouthing of unintelligible jargon. Our idea of philosophy embraces more than nooklearning which, unless quickened into active usefulness, is sheer pedegogueism ; more than formalists with stereotyped laudations of stereotyped absurdities ever dreamt; more — vastly more —than is included in the popular notion concerning- it.

Dominion over natural things. To give man that is the steep aim of genuine philosophers. Well did a great poet say philosophy “ is not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose.” But fools being so numerous in our lower world, almost every where philosophy is made “ harsh and crabbed.” Nay, it would seem as if public teachers of philosophy had combined to make philosophy the synonyme of stupidity. Faust sold himself to that sneering but still shrewd, witty, and profound personification of evil —the immortal Mephistopheles. Our “ harsh and crabbed” teachers of that which should neither be crebbed nor harsh may by imagination, which has a knack of “ bodying forth forms of things unknown,” be supj osed to have taken upon themselves the livery of that dingy, dull, ill-humored, deity, (or demon rather) whose throne is “ down among the dead men.” If bound to choose between philosopher Pluto and philosopher Mephistopheles (for both are philosophers of the school Satanic) we should prefer Mephistopheles because whatever charges may be made against him, that of being a dullard cannot fairly be one of them. When Romeo is inconsolable at the idea of being “ banished” Friar Laurence endeavors to soothe him by saying—• I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy,To comfort thee, though thou art banished. Here we have philosophy likened to “ sweet milk,” and “ sweet milk” it is, or at least ought to be, whether in adversity or prosperity. But Mechanic’s Institute philosophers have dealt with philosophy as if it were sourer than sour kraut—sourer than nature’s sourest thing, come from whence it may. Lectures should be associated with Music, with Pictures, with Statuary with Flowers, with all things of beauty, because a sense of beauty, as Plato more than two thousand years declared, is best possible foundation on which to erect Virtue, and because “ a thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” Why should human sense of beauty- be fed at the Gin Palace and starved in the Mechanic’s Institute? Nor should comfort be neglected. Nicest of all nice words is comfort. And to make people comfortable we deem the prime duty of those who manage Mechanic’s Institutes. How can we expect rhe artizan after hours of toil “ to keep his body up” on a bard, unbacked, seat with nothing to look at but his neighbour’s face, or plastered walls, and nothing to charm his ears but theLecturer’smusical, or unmusical voice. A moderate acquaintance with physiological principles will suffice to convince any one Jthat attention soon flags when

the listener feels unc nnfortable. Were man a creature of intellect alone Mechanic’s Institute Lecture Rooms and their “ fittings” would suit him to a nicety. But man is not —never can ne — “an intellectual all in all.” He is a creature of feeling as well as intellect. He learns best from those who put him most at his ease. He cannot, except in rare cases, be persuaded to pay for that which has no hold upon his feelings. Mechanic’s Institute philosophers, either in contempt or in ignorance of these common sense principles, manage to scare mechanic’s from the Lecture Hall to the Tap Parlour, and furnish mortifying evidence that he was right who said — corruptio optimi pessima— that the best things are liable to greatest abuse ; that where there is zeal there will too often be passion ; where passion, blindness; where blindness, mischief.