One of the good effects of a free communication of the young with society is, to lessen the exacting nature of the affections. People who live too much to themselves--in their own centre, and for their own single objects--become fastidious to disease. They ask too much from their neighbors. Willing to surrender their OWN affections at a glance, they fancy the world wanting in sensibility when they find that their readiness in this respect fails to produce a corresponding readiness in others. This is the natural history of that enthusiasm which is thrown back upon itself and is chilled by denial. The complaint of coldness and selfishness against the world is very common among very young or very inexperienced men. The world gets a bad character, simply because it refuses to lavish its affections along the highways--simply because it is cautious in giving its trusts, and expects proofs of service and actual sympathy rather than professions. Men like myself, of a warm, impetuous nature, complain of the heartlessness of mankind. They fancy themselves peculiarly the victims of an unkind destiny in this respect; and finally cut their throats in a moment of frenzy, or degenerate into a cynicism that delights in contradictions, in sarcasms, in self-torture, and the bitterest hostility to their neighbors.
Society itself is the only and best corrective of this unhappy disposition. The first gift to the young, therefore, should be the gift of society. By this word society, however, I do not mean a set, a clique, a pitiable little circle. Let the sphere of movement be sufficiently extended--as large as possible--that the means of observation and thought may be sufficiently comprehensive, and no influences from one man or one family shall be suffered to give the bias to the immature mind and inexperienced judgment. In society like this, the errors, prejudices, weaknesses, of one man, are corrected by a totally opposite form of character in another. The mind of the youth hesitates. Hesitation brings circumspection, watchfulness; watchfulness, discrimination; discrimination, choice; and a capacity to choose implies the attainment of a certain degree of deliberateness and judgment with which the youth may be permitted to go upon his way, supposed to be provided for in the difficult respect of being able henceforward to take care of himself.