rom the very time
when first, through inexperience, heedlessness, or affectation, the
imagination took its departure from the side of truth, its original
parent. Can a disputant thus accoutred be withstood?--one to whom,
further, every movement in the thoughts of his antagonist is revealed by
the light of his own experience; who, therefore, sympathizes with
weakness gently, and wins his way by forbearance; and hath, when
needful, an irresistible power of onset, arising from gratitude to the
truth which he vindicates, not merely as a positive good for mankind,
but as his own especial rescue and redemption.

I might here conclude: but my correspondent towards the close of his
letter, has written so feelingly upon the advantages to be derived, in
his estimation, from a living instructor, that I must not leave this
part of the subject without a word of direct notice. The Friend cited,
some time ago,[28] a passage from the prose works of Milton, eloquently
describing the manner in which good and evil grow up together in the
field of the world almost inseparably; and insisting, consequently, upon
the knowledge and survey of vice as necessary to the constituting of
human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth.

[28] 'The Friend,' vol. i. p. 96 (ed. 1850). G.

If this be so, and I have been reasoning to the same effect in the
preceding paragraph, the fact, and the thoughts which it may suggest,
will, if rightly applied, tend to moderate an anxiety for the guidance
of a more experienced or superior mind. The advantage, where it is
possessed, is far from being an absolute good: nay, such a preceptor,
ever at hand, might prove an oppression not to be thrown off, and a
fatal hindrance. Grant that in the general tenor of his intercourse with
his pupil he is forbearing and circumspect, inasmuch as he is rich in
that knowledge (above all other necessary for a teacher) which cannot
exist without a liveliness of memory, preserving for him an unbroken
image of the winding, excursive, and often retrograde course, along
which his own intellect has passed. Grant that, furnished with these
distinct remembrances, he wishes that the mind of his pupil should be
free to luxuriate in the enjoyments, loves, and admirations appropriated
to its age; that he is not in haste to kill what he knows will in due
time die of itself; or be transmuted, and put on a nobler form and
higher faculties otherwise unattainable. In a word,