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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
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