7'2. 1(' }IE (MPROWGMENT OF THE sstNn. and by degrees you will acquire that delightful and easy manner, of address and behaviour in all useful correspondences, which may render your company every where desired and beloved í and at the same time among the best pf your companions you may make the highest improvement in your intellectual acquisitions, that the discourse of mortal creatures will allow, under all our disadvantages' in this sorry state of mortality. But there is a day conning, when we shall be seiFed away from this lower class, in the school of knowledge, where we labour under the many dangers and darknesses, the errors and the incumbrances offlesh and blood, and our conversation shall be with angels, and more illuminated spirits in the upperregions of the universe. CHAP. X. Of Disputes. I. UNDER the general head of Conversation for the Fm- proemeñt of the Mind, we may rank the practice of disputing; that is, When two or more persons appear to maintain different sentiments, anddefend their own, or oppose the other's opinion in alternate discourse by some methods of argument, H. As these disputes often arise in goc d earnest, where the two contenders do really believe the different propositions which they support ; so sometimes they are appointed as mere trials of skill in academies, or schools, by the students: some times they are practised, and that with apparent fervour, in courts . of judicatureby lawyers, in order to gain the fees of their different clients, while both sides perhaps are really of the same senti went with regard to the cause which is tried. III. In common conversation, disputes are often managed without any forms of regularity or order, and they turn to good Or evil purposes, chiefly according to the temper of the dispu touts. They may sometimes be successful to search out truth, sometimes effectual to maintain truth, and convince the mistaken, but at other times a dispute is a mere scene of battle in order to victory and vain triumph. IV. There are some few general roles which should be observed in all debates whatsoever, if we would find out truth by them, or convince a friend of his error, even though they be not managed according to any settled forms of disputation : and as there are almost as many opinions and judgments of things as there are persons, so when. several persons happen to meet and confer together upon any subject, they are ready to declare their' diflirent sentiments, and support them by such reasonings as they arecapable.of. This is called debating, or disputing, as is above described.
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