[Side-note: Neither written words, nor continuous speech, will produce any serious effect in teaching. Dialectic and cross-examination are necessary.] Any writer therefore, in prose or verse--Homer, Solon, or Lysias--who imagines that he can by a ready-made composition, however carefully turned,[81] _if simply heard or read without cross-examination or oral comment_, produce any serious and permanent effect in persuading or teaching, beyond a temporary gratification--falls into a disgraceful error. If he intends to accomplish any thing serious, he must be competent to originate spoken discourse more effective than the written. The written word is but a mere phantom or ghost of the spoken word: which latter is the only legitimate offspring of the teacher, springing fresh and living out of his mind, and engraving itself profoundly on the mind of the hearer.[82] The speaker must know, with discriminative comprehension, and in logical subdivision, both the matter on which he discourses, and the minds of the particular hearers to whom he addresses himself. He will thus be able to adapt the order, the distribution, the manner of presenting his subject, to the apprehension of the particular hearers and the exigencies of the particular moment. He will submit to cross-examination,[83] remove difficulties, and furnish all additional explanations which the case requires. By this process he will not indeed produce that immediate, though flashy and evanescent, impression of suddenly acquired knowledge, which arises from the perusal of what is written. He will sow seed which for a long time appears buried under ground; but which, after such interval, springs up and ripens into complete and lasting fruit.[84] By repeated dialectic debate, he will both familiarise to his own mind and propagate in his fellow-dialogists, full knowledge; together with all the manifold reasonings bearing on the subject, and with the power also of turning it on many different sides, of repelling objections and clearing up obscurities. It is not from writing, but from dialectic debate, artistically diversified and adequately prolonged, that full and deep teaching proceeds; prolific in its own nature, communicable indefinitely from every new disciple to others, and forming a source of intelligence and happiness to all.[85] [Footnote 81: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 277-278. [Greek: ô(s oi( r(apsô|dou/menoi (lo/goi) a)/neu a)nakri/seôs kai\ didachê=s peithou=s e(/neka e)le/chthêsan], &c.] [Footnote 82: Plato, Phædrus, p. 276 A. [Greek: a)/llon o(rô=men lo/gon tou/tou a)delpho\n gnê/sion tô=| tro/pô| te gi/gnetai, kai\ o(/sô| a)mei/nôn kai\ dunatô/teros tou/tou phu/etai? . . . . O(/s met' e)pistê/mês gra/phetai e)n tê=| tou= mantha/nontos psuchê=|, dunato\s me\n a)mu=nai e(autô=|, e)pistê/môn de\ le/gein te kai\ siga=|n pro\s ou(\s dei=. To\n tou= ei)do/tos lo/gon le/geis zô=nta kai\ e)/mpsuchon, ou(= o( gegramme/nos ei)/dôlon a)/n ti le/goito dikai/ôs], &c. 278 A.]