moral or theological discussion. These are to all
the world what law is to lawyers; they are everybody's technicalities;
the medium through which all consider life, and the dialect in which
they express their judgments. I knew three young men who walked together
daily for some two months in a solemn and beautiful forest and in
cloudless summer weather; daily they talked with unabated zest, and yet
scarce wandered that whole time beyond two subjects--theology and love.
And perhaps neither a court of love[40] nor an assembly of divines would
have granted their premises or welcomed their conclusions.

Conclusions, indeed, are not often reached by talk any more than by
private thinking. That is not the profit. The profit is in the exercise,
and above all in the experience; for when we reason at large on any
subject, we review our state and history in life. From time to time,
however, and specially, I think, in talking art, talk becomes effective,
conquering like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge like an
exploration. A point arises; the question takes a problematical, a
baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin to feel lively
presentiments of some conclusion near at hand; towards this they strive
with emulous ardour, each by his own path, and struggling for first
utterance; and then one leaps upon the summit of that matter with a
shout, and almost at the same moment the other is beside him; and behold
they are agreed. Like enough, the progress is illusory, a mere cat's
cradle having been wound and unwound out of words. But the sense of
joint discovery is none the less giddy and inspiriting. And in the life
of the talker such triumphs, though imaginary, are neither few nor far
apart; they are attained with speed and pleasure, in the hour of mirth;
and by the nature of the process, they are always worthily shared.

There is a certain attitude combative at once and deferential, eager to
fight yet most averse to quarrel, which marks out at once the talkable
man. It is not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain
proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my amicable
adversaries. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but huntsmen
questing after elements of truth. Neither must they be boys to be
instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may wrangle and agree on
equal terms. We must reach some solution, some shadow of consent; for
without that, eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not