Not so in England. Here a lecture (outside London) is organised on a
much sterner footing. The people are there for information. The
lecture is organised not by idle, amiable, charming women, but by a
body called, with variations, the Philosophical Society. From
experience I should define an English Philosophical Society as all
the people in town who don't know anything about philosophy. The
academic and university classes are never there. The audience is only
of plainer folk. In the United States and Canada at any evening
lecture a large sprinkling of the audience are in evening dress. At
an English lecture (outside of London) none of them are; philosophy
is not to be wooed in such a garb. Nor are there the same commodious
premises, the same bright lights, and the same atmosphere of gaiety
as at a society lecture in America. On the contrary, the setting is a
gloomy one. In England, in winter, night begins at four in the
afternoon. In the manufacturing towns of the Midlands and the north
(which is where the philosophical societies flourish) there is always
a drizzling rain and wet slop underfoot, a bedraggled poverty in the
streets, and a dimness of lights that contrasts with the glare of
light in an American town. There is no visible sign in the town that
a lecture is to happen, no placards, no advertisements, nothing. The
lecturer is conducted by a chairman through a side door in a dingy
building (The Institute, established 1840), and then all of a sudden
in a huge, dim hall--there sits the Philosophical Society.
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