Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.9

392 MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. your letter, that such disputations can hardly be managed with- out interesting the affections in them, and I am afraid to be biassed, for I seek the truth. It is exceeding hard to dispute without gaining some invisible prejudice and good- liking to the opinion we defend. So devoted are we to ourselves, in this dark and degenerate state, that self-love too easily engages our favour to the cause we have espoused it. Though we had no kindness before for an opinion that we maintain for disputing sake, yet if a plausible and smiling argument for it occurs in our hasty thoughts, how prone are we to hug the creature of our brain, and be almost in love with the opinion for the sake of the argu- ment? I confess there are no such formal reasonings in our minds as these ; yet we are insensibly captivate& to esteem any thing that proceeds from ourselves : Our passion first thinks it pity that such a happy argument of our own invention should be on the false side, and by secret insinuation persuades the judgment to vote it true. How often have I experienced these fallacies working- within me in verbal disputations before my tutor h And, for this reason, I have no great esteem of the method of our academical disputes, where the young sophisters are obliged to oppose the truth by the best arguments they can find, and the tutor defends it and assists the respondent. There is a certain wantonness of wit in youth, and a pleasing ambition of victory, which works in a young warm spirit, much stronger than a desire of truth. There is a strange delight in baffling the respondent, and it grows bigger sensibly, if we can put the pre- sident to a puzzle or a stand. The argument which is so success- ful, relishes better on the lips of the young opponent, and he begins to think that it is solid and unanswerable ; " Surely my tutor's opinion can hardly be true, and though I thought I was put on the defence of a false doctrine, yet since I have found so good an argument for it, 1 can hardly believe it false." Then this invention works on to strengthen his suspicion, and at last the firmly believes the opinion he sought for. Often have I been in danger of such delusions as these, and feel myself too ready to submit to them now. Even a closet, and retirement, and our coolest meditations are liable to these secret sophistries. Upon the first sight of an objection against our arguments, our thoughts are strangely hurried away to ransack the brain for a reply, and we torture our invention to make our side have the last word, before we call in cool judgment calmly to decide the difference; and thus from a hot defence of our own reasonings, we un- imaginably slide into a cordial defence of the cause. This unaccountable prejudice for an opinion in dispute, sticks so close to human nature, that I question whether Pocyon himself can boast an absolute freedom. You seem, my friend, to indulge and maintain some hard consequences now, which some time ago would have startled your soul, and affrighted and

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