This is
precisely as if a musician should insist on having nothing but
perfect chords and simple melodies,--no diminished fifths, no flat
sevenths, no flourishes, on any account. Now it is fair to say,
that, just as music must have all these, so conversation must have
its partial truths, its embellished truths, its exaggerated truths.
It is in its higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal
element as much as pictures or statues. One man who is a little
too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of
esprit.--"Yes," you say, "but who wants to hear fanciful people's
nonsense? Put the facts to it, and then see where it is!"--
Certainly, if a man is too fond of paradox,--if he is flighty and
empty,--if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those
harmonious discords, often so much better than the twinned octaves,
in the music of thought,--if, instead of striking these, he jangles
the chords, stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember
that talking is one of the fine arts,--the noblest, the most
important, and the most difficult,--and that its fluent harmonies
may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore
conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which
lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly
the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the
best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each
other's thoughts, there are so many of them.
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