We confess her charms; but if she cannot show that she is useful as well as delightful, like rational lovers, we must renounce our love, though endeared to us by early associations.

Having come to years of discretion, we know that poetry is not truth, and that a man should be careful how he introduces her to that state or constitution which he himself is; for there is a mighty issue at stake--no less than the good or evil of a human soul.

And it is not worth while to forsake justice and virtue for the attractions of poetry, any more than for the sake of honour or wealth.

'I agree with you.' And yet the rewards of virtue are greater far than I have described.
'And can we conceive things greater still ?' Not, perhaps, in this brief span of life: but should an immortal being care about anything short of eternity?
'I do not understand what you mean ?' Do you not know that the soul is immortal?
'Surely you are not prepared to prove that ?' Indeed I am.

'Then let me hear this argument, of which you make so light.' You would admit that everything has an element of good and of evil.