knowledge. When your mind has been fully made up on the point, after the
careful examination I recommend to you, you must lay your opinion aside
on the shelf, as it were, and suffer it no longer to be considered as a
matter of doubt, or a subject for discussion. You can then, when
temporarily assailed by weak-minded fears, appeal to the former
dispassionate and unprejudiced decision of your unbiassed mind. To one
like you, there is no safer appeal than that from a present excited, and
consequently prejudiced self, to another dispassionate, and consequently
wiser self. Let us then consider in detail what foundation there may be
for the remarks that are made to the depreciation of a cultivated
intellect, and illustrate their truth or falsehood by the examples of
those upon whose habits of life we have an opportunity of exercising our
observation.

First, then, I would have you consider the position and the character of
those among your unmarried friends who are unintellectual and
uncultivated, and contrast them with those who have by education
strengthened natural powers and developed natural capabilities: among
these, it is easy for you to observe whose society is the most useful
and the most valued, whose opinion is the most respected, whose example
is the most frequently held up to imitation,--I mean by those alone
whose esteem is worth possessing. The giddy, the thoughtless, and the
uneducated may indeed manifest a decided preference for the society of
those whose pursuits and conversation are on a level with their own
capacity; but you surely cannot regret that they should even manifestly
(which however is not often ventured upon) shrink from your society.
"Like to like" is a proverb older than the time of Dante, whose answer
it was to Can della Scala, when reproached by him that the society of
the most frivolous persons was more sought after at court than that of
the poet and philosopher. "Given the amuser, the amusee must also be
given."[71] You surely ought not to regret the _cordon sanitaire_ which
protects you from the utter weariness, the loss of time, I might almost
add of temper, which uncongenial society would entail upon you. In the
affairs of life, you must generally make up your mind as to the good
that deserves your preference, and resolutely sacrifice the inferior
advantage which cannot be enjoyed with the greater one. You must
consequently give up all hope of general popularity, if you desire that
your