CHAPTER XVlt. 125 sign of the mind, and abide there long. As much as systemati- cal learning is decried by some vain and humourous triflers of the age, it is certainly the happiest way to furnish the mind with a variety of knowledge. Whatsoever you would trust to your memory let it be dis- posed in a proper method, connected well together, and referred to distinct and particular heads or classes both generalandparti- cular. An apothecary's boy will much sooner learn all the me- dicines in his master's shop, when they are ranged in boxes or on shelves according to their distinct natures, whether herbs, drugs, or minerals, whether leaves or roots, whether chemical or galenical preparations, whether simple or compound, &c. and when they are placed in some order according to their nature, their fluidity, or their consistence, &c. in phials, bottles, galli- pots, eases, drawers, &c. So the genealogy of a family is more easily learnt When you begin at some great grandfather as the root, and distinguish the stock, the large boughs, the lesser branches, the twigs, and the buds, till you come down to the present infants of the house. And indeed all sorts of arts and sciences taught in a method something of this kind, -are more . happily committed to the mind or memory. I might give another plain simile to confirm the truth of this. What horse or carriagecan take up and bear away all the various rude and unwieldly loppings of a brancüy tree at once? But if they are divided yet further, so as to be laid close, and bound up in a more uniformmanner into several faggots, perhaps those loppings may be all carried as one single load or burden. The mutual dependence of things on each other, helps the Memoryof both. A wise connection of the parts of a discourse in a rational method gives great advantage to the reader or hearer, in order to his remembrance of it. Therefore many mathematical demonstrations in a long train may be remembered much better than a heap of sentences which have no connection. The book of Proverbs, at least from the tenth chapter and on- wards, is much harder to remember, than the book of Psalms, for this reason ; and some christians have told me, that they re- member what is written in the epistle to the Romans, and that to the Hebrews, much better than many others of the sacred epistles, because there is more exact method and connection ob- served in them. He that would learn to remember a-sermon which he hears should acquaint himself by degreesawith the method in'which the several important parts of it are delivered. It is a certain fault in a multitude of preachers, that they utterly neglect method ió their harangues : or at least they refuse to render their method visible and sensible to the hearers. One would be tempted to think it was for fear lest their auditors should remember too much
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