either to convince our friend, if he is wrong,--or to admit that he
is right, and that we are wrong. The essential condition of good
argument is freedom from personal feeling, with the desire only for
the truth,--whether it comes from one party or the other.

Hurry, worry, and irritability all come from selfish resistance to
the facts of life, and the only permanent cure for the waste of
force and the exhausting distress which they entail, is a
willingness to accept those facts, whatever they may be, in a spirit
of cheerful and reverent obedience to law.






V

_Nervous Fears_





TO argue with nervous anxiety, either in ourselves or in others, is
never helpful. Indeed it is never helpful to argue with "nerves" at
all. Arguing with nervous excitement of any kind is like rubbing a
sore. It only irritates it. It does not take long to argue excited
or tired nerves into inflammation, but it is a long and difficult
process to allay the inflammation when it has once been aroused. It