swers its purpose if it
simply permits many different people to come together without clashing,
and the purpose of its conventions is the avoidance of collision. In
England the small talk is heavy, like water; in France it is light as
air; in both countries it is a medium and no more.

Society talks, by preference, about amusements; it does so because when
people meet for recreation they wish to relieve their minds from serious
cares, and also for the practical reason that Society must talk about
what its members have in common, and their amusements are more in common
than their work. As M. Thiers recommended the republican form of
government in France on the ground that it was the form which divided
his countrymen least, so a polite and highly civilized society chooses
for the subject of general conversation the topic which is least likely
to separate the different people who are present. It almost always
happens that the best topic having this recommendation is some species
of amusement; since amusements are easily learnt outside the business of
life, and we are all initiated into them in youth.

For these reasons I think that we ought to be extremely tolerant of the
dulness or frivolity which may seem to prevail in any numerous company,
and not to conclude too hastily that the members of it are in any degree
more dull or frivolous than ourselves. It is unfortunate, certainly,
that the art of general conversation is not so successfully cultivated
as it might be, and there are reasons for believing that our posterity
will surpass us in this respect, because as culture increases the spirit
of toleration increases with it, so that the great questions of
politics and religion, in which all are interested, may be discussed
more safely than they could be at the present day, by persons of
different ways of thinking. But even the sort of general conversation we
have now, poor as it may seem, still sufficiently serves as a medium for
human intercourse, and permits us to meet on a common ground where we
may select at leisure the agreeable or instructive friends that our
higher intellect needs, and without whom the intellectual life is one of
the ghastliest of solitudes.

And now permit me to add a few observations on another aspect of this
subject, which is not without its importance.

Let us suppose that every one of rather more than ordinary capacity and
culture were to act as you yourself are acting, and withdraw entirely