ap a price for
the good will of another! When this is in return for a rude thing said
by another, it brings him to his senses, it mortifies and corrects
him in the most salutary way, and places him at the feet of your good
nature, in the eyes of the company. But in stating prudential rules for
our government in society I must not omit the important one of never
entering into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an
instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I
have seen many, of their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one
another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning,
either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves, dispassionately, what
we hear from others, standing uncommitted in argument ourselves. It was
one of the rules, which, above all others, made Doctor Franklin the most
amiable of men in society, 'never to contradict any body.' If he was
urged to announce an opinion, he did it rather by asking questions, as
if for information, or by suggesting doubts. When I hear another express
an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his
opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no
injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of
argument to one opinion? If a fact be misstated, it is probable he is
gratified by a belief of it, and I have no right to deprive him of the
gratification. If he wants information, he will ask it, and then I will
give it in measured terms; but if he still believes his own story, and
shows a desire to dispute the fact with me, I hear him, and say nothing.
It is his affair, not mine, if he prefers error. There are two classes
of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of
young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view
of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details and modifications
which a further progress would bring to their knowledge. The other
consists of the ill-tempered and rude men in society, who have taken up
a passion for politics. (Good humor and politeness never introduce
into mixed society a question on which they foresee there will be a
difference of opinion.) From both of those classes of disputants, my
dear Jefferson, keep aloof, as you would from the infected subjects of
yellow fever or pestilence. Consider yourself, when with them, as among
the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral