The contradictions of judgments, then, neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise, me.  We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and present ourselves to it, especially when it appears in the form of conference, and not of authority.  At every opposition, we do not consider whether or no it be dust, but, right or wrong, how to disengage ourselves:  instead of extending the arms, we thrust out our claws.  I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friend, so much as to tell me that I am a fool, and talk I know not of what.  I love stout expressions amongst gentle men, and to have them speak as they think; we must fortify and harden our hearing against this tenderness of the ceremonious sound of words.  I love a strong and manly familiarity and conversation:  a friendship that pleases itself in the sharpness and vigour of its communication, like love in biting and scratching:  it is not vigorous and generous enough, if it be not quarrelsome, if it be civilised and artificial, if it treads nicely and fears the shock: 

       “Neque enim disputari sine reprehensione potest.”

     ["Neither can a man dispute, but he must contradict.” 
     (Or:) “Nor can people dispute without reprehension.” 
     —­Cicero, De Finib., i. 8.]

When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger:  I advance towards him who controverts, who instructs me; the cause of truth ought to be the common cause both of the one and the other.  What will the angry man answer?  Passion has already confounded his judgment; agitation has usurped the place of reason.  It were not amiss that the decision of our disputes should pass by wager:  that there might be a material mark of our losses, to the end we might the better remember them; and that my man might tell me:  “Your ignorance and obstinacy cost you last year, at several times, a hundred crowns.”  I hail and caress truth in what quarter soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself, and open my conquered arms as far off as I can discover it; and, provided it be not too imperiously, take a pleasure in being reproved, and accommodate myself to my accusers, very often more by reason of civility than amendment, loving to gratify and nourish the liberty of admonition by my facility of submitting to it, and this even 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 suffer themselves to be corrected; and speak always with dissimulation in the presence of one another:  I take so great a pleasure in being judged and known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of the two forms I am so:  my imagination so often contradicts and condemns itself, that ’tis all one to me if another do it, especially considering that I give his reprehension no greater authority than I choose; but I break with him, who carries himself so high, as I know of one who repents