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66 conscientiously than they are in the training of priests, but the usual 'course of rhetoric' is only learned to be forgotten. It deals with the invention and distribution of arguments, the analysis and composition of orations, the various styles of discourse, figures of speech, and the comparative play of ideas and emotions. There are few who retain any knowledge of its multitudinous rules when the period of practice arrives, fewer still who pay the slightest attention to them. The only useful element of the training is the practice of making ecclesiastical students prepare and deliver short sermons to their companions. In many monasteries the students preach to the assembled community during dinner. It affords excellent training for public speaking, for one who is able to speak with any degree of self-possession to a small audience will have little fear of a large congregation. I have often preached to a congregation of a thousand people with the utmost composure, but I have invariably trembled before a congregation of ten or twelve persons.

The course of rhetoric is succeeded by a course of scholastic philosophy. In the great mediæval schools philosophy was taught in conjunction with theology; to the arguments drawn from Scripture and tradition on any point of belief the professor usually added a few arguments 'from reason.' In the twelfth century there had been, of course, much philosophical activity; indeed, the main controversy of that fiercely