'If I converse with a man of mind, and no flincher, who presses hard upon me, right and left, his imagination raises up mine. The contradictions of judgments do neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friends. "Thou art a fool; thou knowest not what thou art talking about." When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger. I advance towards him that contradicts, as to one that instructs me. _I embrace and caress truth, in what hand soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself, and extend to it my conquered arms_; and take a pleasure in being reproved, and _accommodate myself to my accusers_ [aside] (very often more by reason of _civility_ than amendment); loving to gratify the liberty of admonition, by my facility of submitting to it, at my own expense. Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my time to it. They have not the courage _to correct_, because they have not the courage _to be corrected, and speak always with dissimulation in the presence of one another_. I take so great pleasure in being judged and known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of THE TWO FORMS I am so. My imagination does so often contradict and condemn itself, that _it is all one to me if another do it_. The study of books is a languishing, feeble motion, that heats not, whereas conversation _teaches_ and _exercises_ at once.' But what if a book could be constructed on a new principle, so as to produce the effect of _conference_--of the noblest kind of conference--so as to rouse the stupid, lethargic mind to a truly _human_ activity--so as to bring out the common, human form, in all its latent actuality, from the eccentricities of the individual varieties? Something of that kind appears to be attempted here.