pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.  In fine, I receive and admit of all manner of attacks that are direct, how weak soever; but I am too impatient of those that are made out of form.  I care not what the subject is, the opinions are to me all one, and I am almost indifferent whether I get the better or the worse.  I can peaceably argue a whole day together, if the argument be carried on with method; I do not so much require force and subtlety as order; I mean the order which we every day observe in the wranglings of shepherds and shop-boys, but never amongst us:  if they start from their subject, ’tis out of incivility, and so ’tis with us; but their tumult and impatience never put them out of their theme; their argument still continues its course; if they interrupt, and do not stay for one another, they at least understand one another.  Any one answers too well for me, if he answers what I say:  when the dispute is irregular and disordered, I leave the thing itself, and insist upon the form with anger and indiscretion; falling into wilful, malicious, and imperious way of disputation, of which I am afterwards ashamed.  ’Tis impossible to deal fairly with a fool:  my judgment is not only corrupted under the hand of so impetuous a master, but my conscience also.

Our disputes ought to be interdicted and punished as well as other verbal crimes:  what vice do they not raise and heap up, being always governed and commanded by passion?  We first quarrel with their reasons, and then with the men.  We only learn to dispute that we may contradict; and so, every one contradicting and being contradicted, it falls out that the fruit of disputation is to lose and annihilate truth.  Therefore it is that Plato in his Republic prohibits this exercise to fools and ill-bred people.  To what end do you go about to inquire of him, who knows nothing to the purpose?  A man does no injury to the subject, when he leaves it to seek how he may treat it; I do not mean by an artificial and scholastic way, but by a natural one, with a sound understanding.  What will it be in the end?  One flies to the east, the other to the west; they lose the principal, dispersing it in the crowd of incidents after an hour of tempest, they know not what they seek:  one is low, the other high, and a third wide.  One catches at a word and a simile; another is no longer sensible of what is said in opposition to him, and thinks only of going on at his own rate, not of answering you:  another, finding himself too weak to make good his rest, fears all, refuses all, at the very beginning, confounds the subject; or, in the very height of the dispute, stops short and is silent, by a peevish ignorance affecting a proud contempt or a foolishly modest avoidance of further debate:  provided this man strikes, he cares not how much he lays himself open; the other counts his words, and weighs them for reasons; another only brawls, and uses the advantage of his lungs.