Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/117

Rh concerning every one of those parts into plain and simple questions; and then what was thought obscure, perplexed, and too hard for our weak parts, will lay itself open to the understanding in a fair view, and let the mind into that which before it was awed with, and kept at a distance from, as wholly mysterious. I appeal to my reader’s experience, whether this has never happened to him, especially when, busy on one thing, he has occasionally reflected on another. I ask him whether he has never thus been scared with a sudden opinion of mighty difficulties, which yet have vanished, when he has seriously and methodically applied himself to the consideration of this seeming terrible subject; and there has been no other matter of astonishment left, but that he amused himself with so discouraging a prospect of his own raising, about a matter which in the handling was found to have nothing in it more strange nor intricate than several other things which he had long since, and with ease, mastered. This experience would teach us how to deal with such bugbears another time, which should rather serve to excite our vigor than enervate our industry. The surest way for a learner in this, as in all other cases, is not to advance by jumps and large strides; let that which he sets himself to learn next be indeed the next, i. e., as nearly conjoined with what he knows already as is possible; let it be distinct, but not remote from it; let it be new, and what he did not know before, that the understanding may advance; but let it be as little at once as may be, that its advances may be clear and sure. All the ground that it gets this way it will hold. This distinct gradual growth in knowledge is firm and sure; it carries its own light with it