CHAP. II.] METHOD (JENERAL AND PARTICULAR. 



231 



what they deli<rer intelligible, and then to prove it; whence 

 they must of necessity have recourse to simile and metaphor, 

 the better to enter the human capacity.^ Hence we find in 

 the more ignorant ages, when learning was in its infancy, 

 and those conceptions which are now trite and vulgar were 

 new and unheard of, everything was full of parables and 

 fiimilitudes, otherwise the things then proposed would either 

 have been passed over without due notice and attention, or 

 else have been rejected as paradoxes. For it is a rule in the 

 doctrine of delivery, that every science which comports not 

 with anticipations and prejudices must seek the assistance of 

 similes and allusions. And thus much for the different 

 kinds of methods, which have not hitherto been observed; 

 but for the others, as the analytic, systatic, diseretic, cryptic, 

 homeric, &c., they are already justly discovered and ranged. 



Method has two parts, one regarding the disposition of a 

 whole work or the subject of a book, and the other the limi- 

 tation of propositions. For architecture not only regards 

 the fabric of the whole building, but also the figure of the 

 columns, arches, &c. ; for method is as it were the architec- 

 ture of the sciences. And herein Ramus has deserved better, 

 by reviving the ancient rules of method,^ than by obtruding 

 his own dichotomies. But I know not by what fatality k 

 happens that, as the poets often feign, the most precious 

 things have the most pernicious keepers. Doubtless the 

 endeavours of Kamus about the reduction of propositions 

 threw him upon his epitomes, and the flats and shallows of 

 the sciences : for it must be a fortunate and well-directed 

 genius that shall attempt to make the axioms of the sciences 

 convertible, and not at the same time render them circular, 

 that is, keep them from returning into themselves.s And 

 yet the attempt of Eamus in this way has not been useless. 



* The reader will bear in mind that this was the situation of the 

 author in his time, and on that account dispense with his figurative 

 style, though it may not be altogether so necessary at present, when 

 we are accustomed to the freest range of philosophical inquiry, Ed. 

 . ' ILaOoXov Trpwroj/, cara TravTOQ, KaO' avTo, k.tX. ; relation to the 

 first principle, relation to all, and relation to one's self. 



^ The axioms in the text must not be understood as applying to the 

 mathematical sciences, which being, as Condillac observes, purely ideal, 

 exact in their conversion nothing more than a detailed exposition of the 

 properties we have already included in their definition ; but of the 



