26 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. {fiOOK VI, 



CHAPTER II. 



Method of Speech includes a wide Part of Tradition. Styled the 

 Wisdom of Delivery. Various kinds of Methods enumerated. Their 

 respective Merits. 



THE doctrine concerning the method of speech has been 

 usually treated as a part of logic ; it has also found a place 

 in rhetoric, under the name of disposition ; but the placing 

 of it in the train of other arts has introduced a neglect of 

 many useful things relating to it. We, therefore, think 

 proper to advance a substantial and capital doctrine of 

 method, under the general name of traditive prudence. But 

 as the kinds of method are various, we shall rather enumerate 

 than divide them ; but for one only method, and perpetually 

 splitting and subdividing, it scarce need be mentioned, as 

 being no more than a light cloud of doctrine that soon blows 

 over, though it also proves destructive to the sciences, be 

 cause the observers thereof, when they wrest things by the 

 laws of their metnod, and either omit all that do not justly 

 fall under their divisions, or bend them contrary to their 

 own nature, squeeze, as it were, the grain out of the sciences, 

 and grasp nothing but the chaff, whence this kind of 

 method produces empty compendiums, and loses the solid 

 substance of the sciences. 3 



punctuation of a letter, whilst the words of the letter shall be non-signi 

 ficants, or sense, that leave no room for suspicion. It may also be worth 

 considering, whether the art of deciphering could not be applied to 

 languages, so as to translate, for instance, a Hebrew book without 

 understanding Hebrew. See Morhof, De variis Scripturse Modis, 

 &quot;Polyhist.&quot; torn. i. lib. iv. cap. 2. and Mr. Falconer s &quot; Cryptomenysis 

 Patefacta.&quot; Shaw. 



The design of Ramus, whose method of Dichotomies is here censured, 

 was to reduce all divisions and subdivisions to two members, with a view to 

 obtain a basis for the construction of dilemmas and disjunctive syllogisms, 

 We are never certain that these species of reasoning are legitimate, except 

 when the divisions out of which they rise are exact : arid the only test of 1 

 this accuracy is to be sought in a dichotomous contradictory division, 

 where the supposition of one member necessarily leads to the exclusion 

 oi the other. This method ol exhausting a subject by an analytic ex 

 haustion of its parts, which he mainly derived from Plato, has its proper 

 sphere in logic ; and though condemned in the text, was employed by 

 Bacon in many of his prerogative instances. The error of Ramus consisted 

 in taking only a part for the whole oi logic, and applying what is strictly- 

 pplicable to subjects of a po*wlir uaturo, to the whole range ot inference. 



