ó TAE IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND. III. A'slight view of things so momentous is not sun- dent. Yeti should therefore contrive and practise some pro- per methods to acquaint yourself with your own ignorance, and to impress yourmind with a deep and painful sense of the low and imperfect degrees of your présent knowledge, that you may be incited with labour and activity to pursue after greater measures. Among others you may'find some such methods as these successful. 1. Take a wide survey now and then of the vast and un- limited regions of learning. Let your meditations run over the names öf all the sciences, with their numerous branchings, and innumerable particular themes of knowledge; and then reflect how few of them you are acquainted with in any tolerable degree. The most learned of mortals. will never find occasion to act over again what is fabled of Alexander the Great, that when he had conquered what was called the Lastern World,- hé wept for want of more Worlds to conquer. The worlds of science are im- mense and endless. 2. Think what a numberless variety of questions and dif- ficulties there are belonging even to that' particular . science, in which you have made the greatest progress, and how few of them there are in which you have arrived at a final and undoubted certainty ; excepting only those questions in the pure and .simple mathematics; whose theorems are demonstra- ble and leave scarcely any doubt ;- and yet even in the pur, suit of some few ,of these, mankind have been strangely be wildered. 3. Spend a few thoughts sometimes on the puzzling en- quiries concerning vacuums and atoms, the doctrine of infini., tkes, indivisibles and incommensurables in. geometry, wherein there appear some insolvable difficulties : Do this on purpose to give you a more sensible impression . of the poverty of. your understanding, and the imperfection, of your knowledge. This will teach you what a vain thing it is to fancy that you know all things ; and will instruct you to think modestly of your pre- sent attainments, when every dust of the earth and every inch Of empty space surmounts your understanding and triumphs over your presumption. Arithmo had beets bred up to ac- counts all his life, and thought himself a complete master of numbers. But when he was pushed Lard to give the square root of the number 2, he tried at it; and laboured long in millesimal fractious, until.lie confessed therewas no end of the inquiry; and yet he learnt so much modesty by this perplex- ing gncstion, that he was afraid to say, it was an impossible cling. It Se. some good degree of improvement 'when we are atrziel to he pósitive. lad the amounts of those vast treasures of knowledge
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