s evil: but I propose to myself impracticable
measures.

The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opinion, is
conversation; I find the use of it more sweet than of any other action of
life; and for that reason it is that, if I were now compelled to choose,
I should sooner, I think, consent to lose my sight, than my hearing and
speech. The Athenians, and also the Romans, kept this exercise in great
honour in their academies; the Italians retain some traces of it to this
day, to their great advantage, as is manifest by the comparison of our
understandings with theirs. The study of books is a languishing and
feeble motion that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises
at once. If I converse with a strong mind and a rough disputant, he
presses upon my flanks, and pricks me right and left; his imaginations
stir up mine; jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up
to something above myself; and acquiescence is a quality altogether
tedious in discourse. But, as our mind fortifies itself by the
communication of vigorous and regular understandings, 'tis not to be
expressed how much it loses and degenerates by the continual commerce and
familiarity we have with mean and weak spirits; there is no contagion
that spreads like that; I know sufficiently by experience what 'tis worth
a yard. I love to discourse and dispute, but it is with but few men, and
for myself; for to do it as a spectacle and entertainment to great
persons, and to make of a man's wit and words competitive parade is, in
my opinion, very unbecoming a man of honour.

Folly is a bad quality; but not to be able to endure it, to fret and vex
at it, as I do, is another sort of disease little less troublesome than
folly itself; and is the thing that I will now accuse in myself. I enter
into conference, and dispute with great liberty and facility, forasmuch
as opinion meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, and
wherein to take any deep root; no propositions astonish me, no belief
offends me, though never so contrary to my own; there is no so frivolous
and extravagant fancy that does not seem to me suitable to the production
of human wit. We, who deprive our judgment of the right of determining,
look indifferently upon the diverse opinions, and if we incline not our
judgment to them, yet we easily give them the hearing: Where one scale is
totally empty, I let the other waver under an old wife's dreams; and I
t