ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 171 



most important affairs are generally committed to weak and 

 treacherous ciphers. And thus much for the organ of speech. 



CHAPTER II 



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

 dom of Delivery. Various kinds of Methods enumerated. Their 

 respective Merits 



The doctrine concerning the method of speech has been usu- 

 ally treated as a part of logic ; it has also found a place in rhet- 

 oric, 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 destruc- 

 tive to the sciences, because the observers thereof, when they 

 wrest things by the laws of their method, and either omit all 

 that do not justly fall under their divisions, or bend them con- 

 trary 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. 



Let the first difference of method be, therefore, betwixt the 

 doctrinal and initiative. By this we do not mean that the initi- 

 ative method should treat only of the entrance into the sci- 

 ences, and the other their entire doctrine ; but borrowing the 

 word from religion, we call that method initiative which opens 

 and reveals the mysteries of the sciences ; so that as the doctrinal 

 method teaches, the initiative method should intimate, the 

 doctrinal method requiring a belief of what is delivered, but 

 the initiative rather that it should be examined. The one deals 

 out the sciences to vulgar learners, the other as to the children 

 of wisdom the one having for its end the use of the sciences as 

 they now stand, and the other their progress and further ad- 

 vancement. But this latter method seems deserted; for the 

 sciences have hitherto been delivered as if both the teacher and 

 the learner desired to receive errors by consent the teacher 



