CHAPTERXX. l4tt CHAP. XX. Of the Sciences, and their use in particular Professions. I. THE best way to learn any science, is to begin with a regular system, or a short and plain scheine of that science, well drawn up into a narrow compass, omitting the deeper and more abstruse parts of it, and that also under the conduct and instruc- tion of some skilful teacher. Systems are necessary to give an entire and comprehensive view of the several parts ofany science, which may have a mutual influence toward the explication or proof of each other : whereas if a man deals always and only in essays and discourses on particular parts of a science, lie wilt never obtain a distinct and just idea of the whole, and may per- haps omit some important part of it after seven years reading of such occasional discourses. For this reason, young students should apply themselves to their systems much more than pain- phlets. That man is never so fit to judge of particular subjectS relating to any science, who has never taken a survey of the whole. It is theremark of an ingenious writer, should a barbarous Indian, who had never seen a palace or a ship, view their sepa= rate anddisjoined parts, and observe the pillars, doors, wind+ s, cornices and turrets of the one, or the prow and stern, the ribs andmasts, the ropes and shrouds, the sails and tackleof the other he would beable to form but a very lame and dark idea of either of those excellent and useful inventions. In like manner, those who contemplate only the fragments or pieces broken ofl'from any science dispersed in short unconnected discourses, and do not dis- cern their relation to each other, and how they may be adapted, and by their union procure the delightful symmetry of a regular scheine, can never survey an entire body of truth, but must alwaysview it as deformed and dismembered ; while their ideas, which must be ever indistinct and often repugnant, will lie in the brain unsorted, and thrown together without order or coherence : such is the knowledge of those men who live upon the scraps of the sciences. A youth of genius and lively imagination, of an active and forward spirit, may form within himselfsome alluring scenes and pleasing schemes in the beginning of ascience, which are utterly inconsistent with some of the necessary and substantial parts of it which appear in the middle or the end. And if he never read and pass through the whole, he takes up and is satisfied with his own hasty pleasing schemes, and treasures those errors tip amongst his solid acquisitions :, whereas his own labour and study farther pursued would have shewn him his early mistakes, and cured him of his self-flattering delsions. Hence it comes to pass, that we have so many half - scholars now-a-days, and there is so much confusion and inconsistency in the notions and ópiniotís
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