_Mr. Forester._ Reason may be diffused in society, but it is only in minds which _have courage enough to despise prejudice and virtue enough to love truth only for itself_,[127] that its seeds will germinate into wholesome and vigorous life. The love of truth is the most noble quality of human intellect, the most delightful in the interchange of private confidence, the most important in the direction of those speculations which have public happiness for their aim. Yet of all qualities this is the most rare: it is the Phoenix of the intellectual world. In private intercourse, how very very few are they whose assertions carry conviction! How much petty deception, paltry equivocation, hollow profession, smiling malevolence, and polished hypocrisy combine to make a desert and a solitude of what is called society! How much empty pretence and simulated patriotism, and shameless venality, and unblushing dereliction of principle, and clamorous recrimination, and daring imposture, and secret cabal, and mutual undermining of ‘Honourable Friends,’ render utterly loathsome and disgusting the theatre of public life! How much timid deference to vulgar prejudice, how much misrepresentation of the motives of conscientious opponents, how many appeals to unreflecting passion, how much assumption of groundless hypothesis, how many attempts to darken the clearest light and entangle the simplest clue, render not only nugatory, but pernicious, the speculations of moral and political reason! Pernicious, inasmuch as it is better for the benighted traveller to remain stationary in darkness, than to follow an _ignis fatuus_ through the fen! Falsehood is the great vice of the age: falsehood of heart, falsehood of mind, falsehood of every form and mode of intellect and intercourse: so that it is hardly possible _to find a man of worth and goodness of whom to make a friend: but he who does find such an one will have more enjoyment of friendship than in a better age; for he will be doubly fond of him, and will love him as Hamlet does Horatio, and with him retiring and getting, as it were, under the shelter of a wall, will let the storm of life blow over him_.[128] _Mr. Fax._ But that retirement must be consecrated to philosophical labour, or, however delightful to the individuals, it will be treason to the public cause. Be the world as bad as it may, it would necessarily be much worse if the votaries of truth and the children of virtue were all to withdraw from its vortex, and leave it to itself. If reason be progressive, however slowly, the wise and good have sufficient encouragement to persevere; and even if the doctrine of deterioration be true, it is no less their duty to contribute all in their power to retard its progress, by investigating its causes and remedies.