METHOD OF STUDY. 419 



the most professed empiric, who does not, upon many occasions, 

 use theory, from a tincture of the school in which he was bred, 

 or from the books he has read. The abuse is indeed often very 

 great, but I take the propensity to be irresistible ; and, in my 

 opinion, the only possible means of correcting the abuse is, by 

 engaging men in the study of the theory in its full extent. 

 Every function of the human body is connected with the others, 

 and all of them with some general laws of the whole economy. 

 The whole makes but one system whose parts are connected 

 and mutually depending on one another. The application of 

 particulars to a whole will often discover their fallacy , and the 

 applying any general system to particulars will often discover 

 its true limits. A man who studies the theory of physic with 

 any discernment, will indeed often find errors to be rejected ; 

 but, by the same means, he will also avoid many errors that he 

 himself might have been exposed to ; and I will venture to af- 

 firm, that he only is provided with a due restraint upon his own 

 reasoning who is best acquainted with the fallacy of that of others. 

 From the whole therefore of what we have now said, I think it 

 is evident that reasoning, and what is called theory in physic, 

 is unavoidable, and that the errors or abuses of it are onty to be 

 guarded against by studying it in its full extent, and, therefore, 

 by studying physic on a dogmatic plan. In all this I have argued 

 only from its necessity to enable us to avoid error ; that it is di- 

 rectly useful I shall say in another place. But, in the meantime, 

 I proceed to the second argument I proposed to consider here. 



Our second argument is, that it has been the study of a dogmatic 

 system which has given the facts of physic which have been al- 

 ready acquired, and that the cultivation of a dogmatic system is 

 the most probable means of acquiring the knowledge of those facts 

 upon which we would found an empiric system. The first part 

 of this proposition is easily maintained ; for, though chance and 

 accident have given us many facts, it is the dogmatists only 

 who have preserved these, and who have given us many more from 

 the experiments which their system suggested ; and they have 

 given many from observations which would neither have been at- 

 tended to nor preserved, but for their application to a system. I 

 have said before, that the labours of the ancient empirics are 

 now entirely lost, and I shall have occasion to say hereafter, that 



