breathed in an uproarious Valhalla. And I suspect that the choice,
given their character and faults, is one to be defended. The
purely wise are silenced by facts; they talk in a clear atmosphere,
problems lying around them like a view in nature; if they can be
shown to be somewhat in the wrong, they digest the reproof like a
thrashing, and make better intellectual blood. They stand
corrected by a whisper; a word or a glance reminds them of the
great eternal law. But it is not so with all. Others in
conversation seek rather contact with their fellow-men than
increase of knowledge or clarity of thought. The drama, not the
philosophy, of life is the sphere of their intellectual activity.
Even when they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible of
what we may call human scenery along the road they follow. They
dwell in the heart of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their
eyes laying hold of what delights them with a brutal avidity that
makes them blind to all besides, their interest riveted on people,
living, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this
description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and ghostly.
By a strong expression, a perturbed countenance, floods of tears,
an insult which his conscience obliges him to swallow, he is
brought round to knowledge which no syllogism would have conveyed
to him. His own experience is so vivid, he is so superlatively
conscious of himself, that if, day after day, he is allowed to
hector and hear nothing but approving echoes, he will lose his hold
on the soberness of things and take himself in earnest for a god.
Talk might be to such an one the very way of moral ruin; the school
where he might learn to be at once intolerable and ridiculous.

This character is perhaps commoner than philosophers suppose. And
for persons of that stamp to learn much by conversation, they must