24 TI5E IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND. brance ; it unfolds and displays the hidden treasures of know- ledge with which reading, observation and study had before furnished the mind. By mutual discourse the soul is awakened and allured to bring forth its hoards of knowledge, and it learns how to render them most useful to mankind, A man of vast readingwithout conversation, is like a miser who lives only to himself. 5. In free and friendly conversation our intellectual powers are snore animated, and our spirits act with a superior vigour in the quest and pursuit of unknown truths. Thereis a sharpness and sagacity of truth that attends conversation, beyond what we find whilst we are shut up reading and musing in our retire- ments. Our souls may be serene in solitude, but not sparkling, though perhaps we are employed in reading the works of the brightest writers. Often has it happened in free discourse, that new thoughts are strangely struck out, and the seeds of truth sparkle and blaze through thecompany, which in calm and silent reading would never have been excited. By conversation you will both give and receive this benefit ; as flints when put into motion and striking against each other, produce living fire on both sides, which would never have risen from the same hard materials in a state of rest. 6. In generous conversation, amongst ingenious and learn- ed men, we have a great advantage of proposing our private opinions, and of bringing our own sentiments to the test, and learning in a more compendious and a safer way what the world will judge of them, how mankind will receive them, what objections may be raised against them, what defects there are in our scheme, and how to correct our own mistakes; which ad- vantages are not so easy to be obtained by our own private me- ditations : for the pleasure, we take in our own notions, and the passion of self-love, as well as the narrowness of our own views, tempt us to pass too favourable an opinion on our own schemes; whereas the variety of genius in our several associates, will give happy notices how our opinion will stand in the view of mankind. 7. It is also another considerable advantage of conversa- tion, that it furnishes the student with the knowledge of men and the affairs of life, as reading furnishes him with'book-learning. A man who dwells all his days among books may have amassed together a vast heap of notions, but he may be a mere scholar, which is a contemptible sort of character in the world. A her- mit who has been shut up in his cell in a college, has contracted a sort of mould and.rust upon his soul, and all his airs of beha- viour have a certain aiíkwardness in them ; but these aukward airs are worn away by degrees in company: the rust and the mould are filed and brushed off by polite conversation. 'file
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