e to be defended. The purely wise are
silenced by facts; they talk in a clear atmosphere, problems lying
around them like a view in nature; if they can be shown to be somewhat
in the wrong, they digest the reproof like a thrashing, and make
better intellectual blood. They stand corrected by a whisper; a word
or a glance reminds them of the great eternal law. But it is not so
with all. Others in conversation seek rather contact with their
fellow-men than increase of knowledge or clarity of thought. The
drama, not the philosophy, of life is the sphere of their intellectual
activity. Even when they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible
of what we may call human scenery along the road they follow. They
dwell in the heart of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their
eyes laying hold of what delights them with a brutal avidity that
makes them blind to all besides, their interest riveted on people,
living, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this
description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and ghostly. By a
strong expression, a perturbed countenance, floods of tears, an insult
which his conscience obliges him to swallow, he is brought round to
knowledge which no syllogism would have conveyed to him. His own
experience is so vivid, he is so superlatively conscious of himself,
that if, day after day, he is allowed to hector and hear nothing but
approving echoes, he will lose his hold on the soberness of things and
take himself in earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an one the
very way of moral ruin; the school where he might learn to be at once
intolerable and ridiculous.

This character is perhaps commoner than philosophers suppose. And for
persons of that stamp to learn much by conversation, they must speak
with their superiors, not in intellect, for that is a superiority that
must be proved, but in station. If they cannot find a friend to bully
them for their good, they must find either an old man, a woman, or
some one so far below them in the artificial order of society, that
courtesy may be particularly exercised.

The best teachers are the aged. To the old our mouths are always
partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They
sit above our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our
respect and pity. A flavour of the old school, a touch of something
different in their manner--which is freer and rounder, if they come of
what is called a good family, and oft